Detailed Climatology for Middle Eastern Ports

Summary

In general, for the three northern-most ports of Adabiya, Aqaba and Kuwait, the VOS data is not likely to reflect the semi-continental nature of the wet bulb temperature climates experienced at these locations. The VOS climatologies provide an oceanic climate which is more representative of the voyage conditions more than 100km south of the respective ports. For Muscat neither the VOS nor Seeb International Airport data are considered to truly represent the wet bulb temperature regime at the Muscat port during periods of light winds. 
The Seeb data is assessed as being slightly more representative of the in-port conditions, but there may be alternative weather stations with more suitable data. A weather station at Mina Sultan Qaboos (23.61N 58.56E, elevation 4m) is known to exist with data potentially available from May 1983 through to December 2008 that warrants investigation. It is recommended that the land based wet bulb temperature climatologies provided in this report be incorporated into the port of discharge component of HotStuff 3.0. Concurrent consideration should be given to acquiring the complete historical weather data for the relevant weather stations near each port of discharge, with priority given to the ports where the VOS data has lower applicability. 
 It should also be noted that, although outside the scope of this project, it is possible to provide predictions of expected weather conditions for the times of arrival of the livestock carrying vessels, to assist in decisions made to avoid major heat stress events during the period of the animal discharge. Moderately high resolution numerical weather predictions are available for the Middle Eastern region on a routine basis.