Abstract
While sea spray can significantly impact air–sea heat fluxes, the effect of spray produced by the interaction of wind and waves is not explicitly addressed in current operational numerical models. In the present work, the thermal effects of the sea spray were investigated for an idealized tropical cyclone (TC) through the implementation of different sea spray models into a coupled air–sea–wave numerical system. Wave-Reynolds-dependent and wave-steepness-dependent sea spray models were applied to test the sensitivity of local wind, wave, and ocean fields of this TC system. Results show that while the sensible heat fluxes decreased by up to 231 W m−2 (364%) and 159 W m−2 (251%), the latent heat fluxes increased by up to 359 W m−2 (89%) and 263 W m−2 (76%) in the simulation period, respectively. This results in an increase of the total heat fluxes by up to 135 W m−2 (32%) and 123 W m−2 (30%), respectively. Based on different sea spray models, sea spray decreases the minimum sea level pressure by up to 7 hPa (0.7%) and 8 hPa (0.8%), the maximum wind speed increases by up to 6.1 m s−1 (20%) and 5.7 m s−1 (19%), the maximum significant wave height increases by up to 1.1 m (17%) and 1.6 m (25%), and the minimum sea surface temperature decreases by up to 0.2 °C (0.8%) and 0.15 °C (0.6%), respectively. As the spray has such significant impacts on atmospheric and oceanic environments, it needs to be included in TC forecasting models.
Highlights
Andreas et al [5] suggested that the sea spray-induced heat fluxes account for more than 10% of the total air–sea heat fluxes once the wind speed is beyond 12 m s−1
We aim to investigate the thermal effects of the aforementioned sea spray models on the local atmosphere, wave, and ocean fields under an idealized tropical cyclone (TC) system
Standard deviations are estimated within two times of the radius of maximum wind (RMW) from the center of TCs for the numerical experiments
Summary
Sea spray, is composed of water droplets ejected from the ocean surface by wind shearing and wave breaking [1]. There is still debate whether sea spray significantly impacts the air–sea heat fluxes under light to moderate wind conditions, spray droplets strongly modulate air–sea heat fluxes at the ocean surface under extreme wind conditions, such as a tropical cyclone (TC) system. Andreas et al [5] suggested that the sea spray-induced heat fluxes account for more than 10% of the total air–sea heat fluxes once the wind speed is beyond 12 m s−1. Significant, the sea spray mechanism is still largely missing in present-day operational TC forecasting models [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]
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