Abstract
Sea spray-mediated heat flux plays an important role in air-sea heat transfer. Heat flux integrated over droplet size spectrum can well simulate total heat flux induced by sea spray droplets. Previously, a fast spray-flux scheme assuming single-radius droplets (A15) was widely used since the full-size spectrum integral is computational expensive. Based on the Gaussian Quadrature (GQ) method, a new fast scheme (SPRAY-GQ) of sea spray-mediated heat flux is derived. The performance of SPRAY-GQ is evaluated by comparing heat fluxes with those estimated from the widely-used A15. The new scheme shows a better agreement with the original spectrum integral. To further evaluate the performance of A15 and SPRAY-GQ, the two schemes are implemented into a coupled CFSv2.0-WW3 system, and a series of 56-day simulations in summer and winter are conducted and compared. The comparisons with satellite measurements and reanalysis data show that the SPRAY-GQ scheme could simulate air-sea heat flux more reasonably than the A15 scheme. For experiments based on SPRAY-GQ, the sea surface temperature at mid-high latitudes of both hemispheres, particularly in summer, is significantly improved compared with the experiments based on A15. The simulation of 10-m wind speed and significant wave height at mid-low latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere is improved as well. The computational time of SPRAY-GQ is about the same as that of A15. Thereby, the newly-developed SPRAY-GQ scheme has a potential to be used for improving air-sea heat flux in coupled models.
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