Abstract
Using bulk formulas, two-year platform (fastened to the seabed) hourly observations from 2016 to 2017 in the East China Sea (121.6° E, 32.4° N) are used to investigate the role of the tide-induced surface elevation in changing the fixed observational height and modifying the momentum and air-sea turbulent heat fluxes. The semidiurnal tide-dominated elevation anomalies ranging from −3.6 to 3.9 m change the fixed platform observational height. This change causes hourly differences in the wind stress and latent and sensible heat fluxes between estimates with and without considering surface elevation, with values ranging from −1.5 × 10−3 Nm−2, −10.2 Wm−2, and −3.6 Wm−2 to 2.2 × 10−3 Nm−2, 8.4 Wm−2, and 4.6 Wm−2, respectively. More significant differences occur during spring tides. The differences show weak dependence on the temperature, indicating weak seasonal variations. The mean (maximum) difference percentage relative to the mean magnitude is approximately 3.5% (7%), 1.5% (3%), and 1.5% (3%) for the wind stress and latent and sensible heat fluxes, respectively. The boundary layer stability (BLS) can convert from near-neutral conditions to stable and unstable states in response to tide-induced changes in the observational height, with a probability of occurrence of 2%. Wind anomalies play dominant roles in determining the hourly anomalies of the latent heat flux, regardless of the state of the BLS. Extreme cases, including the cold air outbreak in 2016, tropical cyclones Meranti in 2016, and Ampil in 2018, are also examined. This study will facilitate future observation-reanalysis comparisons in the studied coastal region where ocean–atmosphere-land interactive processes are significant.
Highlights
The turbulent fluxes of momentum, latent heat flux (Q LH ), and sensible heat flux (QSH ) at the air-sea interface are fundamental in virtually every atmosphere–ocean feedback process and undoubtedly important for understanding the air-sea interaction 4.0/).and climate change
This paper aims to solve a problem in estimating surface wind stress and turbulent heat fluxes by including tidal elevation based on platform observations
The results in this paper indicate that the high-resolution observations of wind speed play a dominant role in determining the turbulent heat fluxes, especially the Q LH
Summary
The turbulent fluxes of momentum (wind stress), latent heat flux (Q LH ), and sensible heat flux (QSH ) at the air-sea interface are fundamental in virtually every atmosphere–ocean feedback process and undoubtedly important for understanding the air-sea interaction 4.0/).and climate change. The air-sea turbulent heat fluxes, including evaporative Q LH and conductive fluxes, balance the incoming solar radiation to obtain a net surface heat flux [5,6], which contributes to the seasonal cycle of sea surface temperature [7,8]. Constructing accurate air-sea momentum and turbulent heat fluxes is vital for understanding upper ocean dynamics. The momentum and heat flux estimates at global to regional scales suffer from significant uncertainties [9,10,11,12,13,14] arising from both the observation of physical variables in the air-sea boundary layers and the empirical estimates of parameters [15]. The Q LH obtained from eddy covariance measurements must be corrected by the mean vertical heat flux as a result of the requirement of the zero balanced net dry mass flux
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