Effects of Sea Spray on Tropical Cyclone Intensity

Abstract

The intensity of tropical cyclones is sensitive to the rates at which enthalpy and momentum are transferred between sea and air in the high-wind core of the storm. Present models of the wind dependence of these transfer rates suggest that the effective drag coefficient is more than twice the effective enthalpy transfer coefficient at wind speeds above 25 m s−1. Using this ratio in numerical models, however, makes it impossible to sustain storms of greater than marginal hurricane intensity. Some other physical process must, therefore, enhance enthalpy transfer at very high wind speeds. This paper suggests that re-entrant sea spray explains this enhanced transfer. When a spray droplet is ejected from the ocean, it remains airborne long enough to cool to a temperature below the local air temperature but not long enough to evaporate an appreciable fraction of its mass. The spray droplet thus gives up sensible heat and returns to the sea before it has time to extract back from the atmosphere the heat necessary to continue its evaporation. Microphysical modeling, combined with data from the Humidity Exchange over the Sea Experiment (HEXOS), makes it possible to derive an expression for the net enthalpy transfer of re-entrant spray. This spray enthalpy flux is roughly cubic in wind speed. When this relation is used in a numerical simulation of a hurricane, the spray more than compensates for the observed increase in the ratio of drag and enthalpy transfer coefficients with wind speed. The momentum flux associated with sea spray is an important energy sink that moderates the effects of this spray enthalpy flux. Including a parameterization for this momentum sink along with wave drag and spray enthalpy transfer in the hurricane simulation produces results that are similar to ones based on equal transfer coefficients.