Modeling Turbulent Air-Sea Exchange in High Winds

Abstract

LONG-TERM GOALS: The goal is to investigate, theoretically and through analyzing existing data, the role that sea spray plays in transferring heat, moisture, and momentum across the air-sea interface, especially in high winds. Ultimately, I plan to develop simple, fast, physics-based parameterizations for these air-sea fluxes for use in large-scale models, especially those simulating tropical and extratropical storms. OBJECTIVES: 1. By analyzing turbulent flux data sets, develop simple, fast parameterizations for the air-sea sensible and latent heat fluxes, the total enthalpy flux, and the surface stress in high winds, where sea spray is mediating all of these exchanges. 2. Theoretically extend these parameterizations to high winds, up to hurricane strength (~60 m/s). 3. Collaborate with large-scale modelers to implement and test these formulations in state-of-the-art coupled atmosphere-ocean models.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 30, 2006
Accession Number
ADA612399

Entities

People

  • Edgar L. Andreas

Organizations

  • Engineer Research and Development Center

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Algorithms
  • Cold Regions
  • Data Sets
  • Engineering
  • Equations
  • Friction
  • Heat Energy
  • Heat Flux
  • Heat Of Vaporization
  • Information Operations
  • Latent Heat
  • Models
  • Sea Surface Temperature
  • Simulations
  • Storms
  • Surface Temperature

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers