[1] Knowledge of the size-and composition-dependent production flux of primary sea spray aerosol (SSA) particles and its dependence on environmental variables is required for modeling cloud microphysical properties and aerosol radiative influences, interpreting measurements of particulate matter in coastal areas and its relation to air quality, and evaluating rates of uptake and reactions of gases in sea spray drops. This review examines recent research pertinent to SSA production flux, which deals mainly with production of particles with r 80 (equilibrium radius at 80% relative humidity) less than 1 mm and as small as 0.01 mm. Production of sea spray particles and its dependence on controlling factors has been investigated in laboratory studies that have examined the dependences on water temperature, salinity, and the presence of organics and in field measurements with micrometeorological techniques that use newly developed fast optical particle sizers. Extensive measurements show that water-insoluble organic matter contributes substantially to the composition of SSA particles with r 80 < 0.25 mm and, in locations with high biological activity, can be the dominant constituent. Order-of-magnitude variation remains in estimates of the size-dependent production flux per white area, the quantity central to formulations of the production flux based on the whitecap method. This variation indicates that the production flux may depend on quantities such as the volume flux of air bubbles to the surface that are not accounted for in current models. Variation in estimates of the whitecap fraction as a function of wind speed contributes additional, comparable uncertainty to production flux estimates.
are used to describe the annual cycle of the near-surface environment and the surface energy budget (SEB). Comparisons with historical data and climatological estimates suggest that the SHEBA site was 3-8°C warmer in March and April. The unique SHEBA profile measurements showed that the mean near-surface environment is strongly stable during 6 winter months, and near neutral or weakly stable during the other months. However, one-hour data show that neutral stratification does occur 25% of the time during the winter. The monthly mean flux profiles suggest that turbulent processes cool the nearsurface atmosphere during the winter and warm it during the summer, though the sign of the sensible heat flux is negative during both the winter and July. The SHEBA SEB calculation is unique in its nearly exclusive use of observed rather than derived values. The magnitude of the best estimate of the annual net observed surface energy surplus at SHEBA (8.2 W m À2 ) was consistent with the observed surface ice and snowmelt and was in reasonable agreement with most previous estimates of the net annual SEB over the Arctic pack ice. However, the partitioning of the various components of the SEB differed in the SHEBA data. The SHEBA site had unusually large incoming longwave radiation in the fall and spring, giving an annual mean that was larger by 10.4-19.3 W m À2 . The site also had substantially less incoming solar radiation during most months than in previous estimates, producing a difference in the annual mean of 5.0-9.5 W m À2 when compared to these estimates. The observed magnitudes of the sensible (À2.2 W m À2 ) and latent (1.1 W m À2 ) heat fluxes at SHEBA were smaller than previous climatological estimates, as were the conductive flux estimates (2.4-5.0 W m À2 ) at this site. Estimates of the measurement errors suggest that they are not likely to alter the conclusions concerning the SEB terms presented here but will prevent us from conclusively determining the reasons for the net thinning of the ice observed during SHEBA.
[1] We present an analysis of surface fluxes and cloud forcing from data obtained during the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) experiment, conducted in the Beaufort and Chuchki Seas and the Arctic Ocean from November 1997 to October 1998. The measurements used as part of this study include fluxes from optical radiometer sets, turbulent fluxes from an instrumented tower, cloud fraction from a depolarization lidar and ceilometer, and atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles from radiosondes. Clear-sky radiative fluxes were modeled in order to estimate the cloud radiative forcing since direct observation of fluxes in cloud-free conditions created large statistical sampling errors. This was particularly true during summer when cloud fractions were typically very high. A yearlong data set of measurements, obtained on a multiyear ice floe at the SHEBA camp, was processed in 20-day blocks to produce the annual evolution of the surface cloud forcing components: upward, downward, and net longwave and shortwave radiative fluxes and turbulent (sensible and latent heat) fluxes. We found that clouds act to warm the Arctic surface for most of the annual cycle with a brief period of cooling in the middle of summer. Our best estimates for the annual average surface cloud forcings are À10 W m À2 for shortwave, 38 W m À2 for longwave, and À6 W m À2 for turbulent fluxes. Total cloud forcing (the sum of all components) is about 30 W m À2 for the fall, winter, and spring, dipping to a minimum of À4 W m À2 in early July. We compare the results of this study with satellite, model, and drifting station data.
The sea spray generation function quantifies the rate at which spray droplets of a given size are produced at the sea surface. As such, it is important in studies of the marine aerosol and its optical properties and in understanding the role that sea spray plays in transferring heat and moisture across the air-sea interface. The emphasis here is on this latter topic, where uncertainty over the spray generation function, especially in high winds, is a major obstacle. This paper surveys the spray generation functions available in the literature and, on theoretical grounds, focuses on one by M. H. Smith et al. that has some desirable properties but does not cover a wide enough droplet size range to be immediately useful for quantifying spray heat transfer. With reasonable modifications and extrapolations, however, the paper casts the Smith function into a new form that can be used to predict the production of sea spray droplets with radii from 2 to 500 m for 10-m winds from 0 to 32.5 m s Ϫ1 . The paper closes with sample calculations of the sensible and latent heat fluxes carried by spray that are based on this new spray generation function.
Measurements of atmospheric turbulence made over the Arctic pack ice during the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean experiment (SHEBA) are used to determine the limits of applicability of Monin-Obukhov similarity theory (in the local scaling formulation) in the stable atmospheric boundary layer. Based on the spectral analysis of wind velocity and air temperature fluctuations, it is shown that, when both of the gradient Richardson number, Ri, and the flux Richardson number, Rf, exceed a 'critical value' of about 0.20 -0.25, the inertial subrange associated with the Richardson-Kolmogorov cascade dies out and vertical turbulent fluxes become small. Some small-scale turbulence survives even in this supercritical regime, but this is non-Kolmogorov turbulence, and it decays rapidly with further increasing stability. Similarity theory is based on the turbulent fluxes in the high-frequency part of the spectra that are associated with energy-containing/flux-carrying eddies. Spectral densities in this high-frequency band diminish as the Richardson-Kolmogorov energy cascade weakens; therefore, the applicability of local Monin-Obukhov similarity theory in stable conditions is limited by the inequalities Ri < cr Ri and Rf < cr Rf . However, it is found that cr Rf = 0.20 -0.25 is a primary threshold for applicability. Applying this prerequisite shows that the data follow classical Monin-Obukhov local z-less predictions after the irrelevant cases (turbulence without the Richardson-Kolmogorov cascade) have been filtered out. Keywords Flux-profile relationships • Critical Richardson number • Monin-Obukhov similarity theory • Nieuwstadt local scaling • Non-Kolmogorov turbulence • Richardson-Kolmogorov cascade • SHEBA • Stable boundary layer • z-less similarity
Measurements of atmospheric turbulence made during the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean Experiment (SHEBA) are used to examine the profile stability functions of momentum, ϕ m , and sensible heat, ϕ h , in the stably stratified boundary layer over the Arctic pack ice. Turbulent fluxes and mean meteorological data that cover different surface conditions and a wide range of stability conditions were continuously measured and reported hourly at five levels on a 20-m main tower for 11 months. The comprehensive dataset collected during SHEBA allows studying ϕ m and ϕ h in detail and includes ample data for the very stable case. New parameterizations for ϕ m (ζ ) and ϕ h (ζ ) in stable conditions are proposed to describe the SHEBA data; these cover the entire range of the stability parameter ζ = z/L from neutral to very stable conditions, where L is the Obukhov length and z is the measurement height. In the limit of very strong stability, ϕ m follows a ζ 1/3 dependence, whereas ϕ h initially increases with increasing ζ , reaches a maximum at ζ ≈ 10, and then tends to A. A. Grachev et al. level off with increasing ζ . The effects of self-correlation, which occur in plots of ϕ m and ϕ h versus ζ , are reduced by using an independent bin-averaging method instead of conventional averaging.
Heat and moisture carried by sea spray have long been suspected of contributing to the air‐sea fluxes of sensible and latent heat. Using time scales that parameterize how long sea spray droplets reside in the air and how quickly they exchange heat and moisture with their environment, I estimate sea spray contributions to the air‐sea heat fluxes. To make these estimates, I first develop a new sea spray generation function that predicts more realistic spume production than earlier models. Spray droplets with initial radii between 10 and 300 μm contribute most to the heat fluxes; the vast majority of these are spume droplets. The modeling not only demonstrates how spray droplets participate in the air‐sea heat exchange but also confirms earlier predictions that the heat carried by sea spray (especially the latent heat) is an important component of the air‐sea heat balance. In my examples, the maximum magnitude of the spray latent heat flux for a 20‐m/s wind is 170 W/m2; the maximum spray sensible heat flux is 33 W/m2. For winds over 10 m/s, the spray latent heat flux is usually a substantial fraction of the interfacial (or turbulent) latent heat flux (estimated from the bulk‐aerodynamic equations) and will thus confound measurements of the air‐sea transfer coefficient for latent heat.
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