Characterizing and Predicting Marine Fog Offshore Newfoundland and Labrador

Abstract

Abstract As several review papers have concluded, marine fog is imperfectly characterized, and quantitative visibility forecasts are difficult to produce accurately. Some unique measurements have been made offshore Newfoundland and Labrador of the climatology of occurrence and the microphysical characteristics of marine, or open-ocean, fog. Based on measurements made at an offshore installation over 21 years, the percent of time with visibilities less than 0.5 n mi or approximately 1 km (1 n mi ≈ 1.85 km) reaches 45% in July, with a low of about 5% during the winter. The occurrence of fog is mainly due to warm air advection, with the highest frequency occurring with wind directions from over the warm Gulf Stream, and with air temperatures about 2°C warmer than the sea surface temperature. There is no diurnal variation in the frequency of occurrence of fog. The microphysical properties of the fog have been documented in the summer time frame, with over 550 h of in situ measurements made offshore with fog liquid water content greater than 0.005 g m−3. The fog droplet number concentration spectra peaks near 6 μm, with a secondary peak near 25–40 μm, which typically contains most of the liquid water content. The median droplet concentration is approximately 70–100 cm−3. The microphysical spectra have been used to develop a new NWP visibility parameterization scheme, and this scheme is compared with other parameterizations currently in use.