Bottom-Up Determination of Air-Sea Momentum Exchange Under a Major Tropical Cyclone

Jarosz, Ewa; Mitchell, Douglas A.; Wang, David W.; Teague, William J.

doi:10.1126/science.1136466

Cited by 258 publications

(315 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…This trend in C d10 is a consequence of the regime of the limited saturation of the MABL dynamics, when the friction velocity at very high winds levels off. These features are in agreement with recent experimental data of Powell et al (2003), Powell (2006) and Jarosz et al (2007) acquired in hurricanes. The model predictions on the saturation of the friction velocity in the MABL are consistent with field data on saturation of the radar backscattering in hurricanes observed by Donnelly et al (1999).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

“…They found that the drag coefficient levels off and starts to decrease with a further increase in the wind speed above about 34 m s −1 . This finding was confirmed by Jarosz et al (2007) who found that the drag coefficient peaks at a wind speed near 32 m s −1 and then steadily decreases as the wind speed continues to rise. This is contrary to the traditional parametrizations that predict an increase of the drag coefficient with increasing wind speed.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 77%

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Impact of Ocean Spray on the Dynamics of the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Kudryavtsev

Makin

2011

Boundary-Layer Meteorol

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The impact of ocean spray on the dynamics of the marine near-surface air boundary layer (MABL) in conditions of very high (hurricane) wind speeds is investigated. Toward this end, a model of the MABL in the presence of sea-spume droplets is developed. The model is based on the classical theory of the motion of suspended particles in a turbulent flow, where the mass concentration of droplets is not mandatory small. Description of the spume-droplet generation assumes that they, being torn off from breaking waves, are injected in the form of a jet of spray into the airflow at the altitude of breaking wave crests. The droplets affect the boundary-layer dynamics in two ways: via the direct impact of droplets on the airflow momentum forming the so-called spray force, and via the impact of droplets on the turbulent mixing through stratification. The latter is parametrized applying the Monin-Obukhov similarity theory. It is found that the dominant impact of droplets on the MABL dynamics appears through the action of the 'spray force' originated from the interaction of the 'rain of spray' with the wind velocity shear, while the efficiency of the stratification mechanism is weaker. The effect of spray leads to an increase in the wind velocity and suppression of the turbulent wind stress in the MABL. The key issue of the model is a proper description of the spume-droplet generation. It is shown that, after the spume-droplet generation is fitted to the observations, the MABL model is capable of reproducing the fundamental experimental finding-the suppression of the surface drag at very high wind speeds. We found that, at very high wind speeds, a thin part of the surface layer adjacent to the surface turns into regime of limited saturation with the spume droplets, resulting in the levelling off of the friction velocity and decrease of the drag coefficient as U −2 10 , U 10 being the wind speed at 10-m height.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Impact of Ocean Spray on the Dynamics of the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Kudryavtsev

Makin

2011

Boundary-Layer Meteorol

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“…(5). This approach follows Jarosz et al (2007), except in some momentum budget details such as bottom drag, which is necessary in shallow water but not here, and entrainment, which is included here but not in the shallow water case. Figure 7 shows the resulting stress estimates, converted to drag coefficients and plotted versus wind speed.…”

Section: B Momentum Balancementioning

confidence: 99%

Upper-Ocean Response to Hurricane Frances (2004) Observed by Profiling EM-APEX Floats*

Sanford

Price

Girton

2011

Journal of Physical Oceanography

199

174

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Three autonomous profiling Electromagnetic Autonomous Profiling Explorer (EM-APEX) floats were air deployed one day in advance of the passage of Hurricane Frances (2004) as part of the Coupled Boundary Layer Air-Sea Transfer (CBLAST)-High field experiment. The floats were deliberately deployed at locations on the hurricane track, 55 km to the right of the track, and 110 km to the right of the track. These floats provided profile measurements between 30 and 200 m of in situ temperature, salinity, and horizontal velocity every half hour during the hurricane passage and for several weeks afterward. Some aspects of the observed response were similar at the three locations-the dominance of near-inertial horizontal currents and the phase of these currents-whereas other aspects were different. The largest-amplitude inertial currents were observed at the 55-km site, where SST cooled the most, by about 2.28C, as the surface mixed layer deepened by about 80 m. Based on the time-depth evolution of the Richardson number and comparisons with a numerical ocean model, it is concluded that SST cooled primarily because of shear-induced vertical mixing that served to bring deeper, cooler water into the surface layer. Surface gravity waves, estimated from the observed high-frequency velocity, reached an estimated 12-m significant wave height at the 55-km site. Along the track, there was lesser amplitude inertial motion and SST cooling, only about 1.28C, though there was greater upwelling, about 25-m amplitude, and inertial pumping, also about 25-m amplitude. Previously reported numerical simulations of the upper-ocean response are in reasonable agreement with these EM-APEX observations provided that a high wind speed-saturated drag coefficient is used to estimate the wind stress. A direct inference of the drag coefficient C D is drawn from the momentum budget. For wind speeds of 32-47 m s 21 , C D ; 1.4 3 10 23 .

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“…The estimated storm's U h was also listed in Table 4. The scaled current speeds (U s ), which were estimated from C D of Jarosz et al (2007), are more similar to the observed U max (Table 4). Since the direct surface wind measurements are sparse under tropical cyclones, uncertainty exists in the estimate of maximum sustained wind speed (VMAX) and R max .…”

Section: Current Velocity Scale (U S )mentioning

confidence: 55%

“…Recent results indicated a saturation value of C D at the wind speed of 28-33 m s −1 (Donelan et al, 2004;Jarosz et al, 2007;Powel et al, 2003). Three semi-empirical formulas from Powel et al (2003), Black et al (2007), and Jarosz et al (2007) are used in this Table 4). The estimated storm's U h was also listed in Table 4.…”

Section: Current Velocity Scale (U S )mentioning

confidence: 99%