Impact of sea spray on the Yellow and East China Seas thermal structure during the passage of Typhoon Rammasun (2002)

Abstract

AbstractStrong winds lead to large amounts of sea spray in the lowest part of the atmospheric boundary layer. The spray droplets affect the air‐sea heat fluxes due to their evaporation and the momentum due to the change of sea surface, and in turn change the upper ocean thermal structure. In this study, impact of sea spray on upper ocean temperatures in the Yellow and East China Seas (YES) during typhoon Rammasun's passage is investigated using the POMgcs ocean model with a sea spray parameterization scheme, in which the sea spray‐induced heat fluxes are based on an improved Fairall's sea spray heat fluxes algorithm, and the sea spray‐induced momentum fluxes are derived from an improved COARE version 2.6 bulk model. The distribution of the sea spray mediated turbulent fluxes was primarily located at Rammasun eye‐wall region, in accord with the maximal wind speeds regions. When Rammasun enters the Yellow sea, the sea spray mediated latent (sensible) heat flux maximum is enhanced by 26% (13.5%) compared to that of the interfacial latent (sensible) heat flux. The maximum of the total air‐sea momentum fluxes is enhanced by 43% compared to the counterpart of the interfacial momentum flux. Furthermore, the sea spray plays a key role in enhancing the intensity of the typhoon‐induced “cold suction” and “heat pump” processes. When the effect of sea spray is considered, the maximum of the sea surface cooling in the right side of Rammasun's track is increased by 0.5°C, which is closer to the available satellite observations.