Sea Spray Impacts on Tropical Cyclone Olwyn Using a Coupled Atmosphere‐Ocean‐Wave Model

Xu, Xingkun; Voermans, Joey; Moon, Il‐Ju; Liu, Qingxiang; Guan, Changlong; Babanin, Alexander V.

doi:10.1029/2022jc018557

Cited by 9 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 60 publications

(137 reference statements)

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“…However, one should note the complexities and the contributions of the wave effects when developing the coupled models. According to Xu et al (2022), a more advanced sea spray parameterization scheme could help to improve the effects of coupling waves evidently in the coupled atmosphere-ocean-wave model, it is also a challenging work in the future.…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of ocean states coupling on the simulated Super Typhoon Megi (2010) in the South China Sea

Zheng

Zhang²,

Zhang³

et al. 2023

Front. Mar. Sci.

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Responses of the South China Sea (SCS) to a typhoon are complex due to the susceptible upper layer and active multiscale motions and thus need to be urgently resolved and validated in numerical simulations. A coupled atmosphere–ocean–wave model and various in-situ observations were applied to understand the strong interactions between Super Typhoon Megi (2010) and the SCS, especially the wave effects on typhoon simulation. Five sensitive experiments using different combinations of models were firstly conducted and compared to validate the effectiveness of the ocean coupling. Compared with WRF-only and ROMS-only outputs, the coupled experiments evidently improved the accuracy of typhoon intensity, the typhoon-induced cold wake, and significant wave height, along with the thermodynamical responses in the upper 400 m layer, including the near-inertial currents, the variation in ocean heat content, and mixed layer depth. However, the differences between WRF-ROMS and COAWST were slight, though the significant wave height was more than 9 m high in COAWST. Further analysis showed that the modification of heat flux, which could cancel out the effect due to the wave-induced surface roughness, is consistent with that of momentum flux in the wave-coupled experiment. This resulted in similar overall results. To further figure out the wave effects on typhoon and eliminate the contingency brought by the surface physical parameterization scheme, six experiments using three surface physical parameterization schemes were designed with and without wave coupling, separately. The sensible heat flux showed significant differences between three schemes, followed by the latent heat flux and the correspondingly changing momentum loss. Results support the above-mentioned conclusion that the typhoon intensity was determined by the net surface flux. Our findings highlight the necessity in using a high-resolution coupled atmosphere–ocean–wave model and proper surface physical parameterization, especially when coupling waves to make accurate regional numerical environment predictions.

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Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of ocean states coupling on the simulated Super Typhoon Megi (2010) in the South China Sea

Zheng

Zhang²,

Zhang³

et al. 2023

Front. Mar. Sci.

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“…V. Babanin & Haus, 2009;Ghantous & Babanin, 2014). While these wave-related algorithms have been widely applied (Aijaz et al, 2017;Xu et al, 2022;W. Zhang et al, 2022), uncertainties regarding sea spray and wave turbulence coefficients may arise due to the limited availability of robust observational data (D'Asaro, 2014;Veron, 2015;Peng & Richter, 2019;Zhao et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While TCs modeling can be sensitive to the coupling between dynamics and physical processes that are coupled with dynamical ocean models, this study primarily focuses on wave-coupled processes. The wave-coupled physical processes are considered through the inclusion of sea spray (Andreas & Emanuel, 2001;Perrie et al, 2005;Xu et al, 2022;Zhao et al, 2017) and wave turbulence (A. Babanin, 2006;A.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…U is the horizontal wind velocity, θ t and θ b are the potential temperature at the lowest model level and bottom surface, respectively, q l and q b are the potential temperature at the lowest model level and bottom surface, respectively. The sea spray‐induced sensible heat fluxes H ( s , sp ) and latent heat fluxes H ( L , sp ) can be iteratively computed by

{H}_{(s,sp)}=\alpha {\rho }_{w}{c}_{pw}{T}^{\prime }V

{H}_{(L,sp)}=\beta {\rho }_{w}{L}_{v}{Q}^{\prime }V-\gamma {\rho }_{w}{c}_{pw}{T}^{\prime }V

V=\frac{4}{3}\pi {\rho }_{w}\int \nolimits_{{r}_{1}}^{{r}_{2}}{r}^{3}\frac{dF}{dr}dr

where α = 3.3, β = 5.7, and γ = 2.8 (Andreas, 2003; L. Zhang et al., 2017) are the exchange coefficients that represent the interaction of individual sea spray droplet with ambient environment, ρ w is the water density, c pw is the water specific heat capacity, T ′ is defined by the temperature difference between generated spray droplet and ambient air temperature, Q ′ depicts the contribution of individual spray droplet to air‐sea latent heat exchange due to phase changes (Andreas & Emanuel, 2001; Perrie et al., 2005; Xu, Voermans, Liu, et al., 2021; Xu et al., 2022), V is the volumetric concentration of in‐time spray droplets, r 1 and r 2 are the smallest and largest sea spray droplets, r is the initial radius of generated sea spray droplets, and

\frac{dF}{dr}

is the sea spray generation function which denotes the number of generated sea spray droplets per second per square meter of ocean surface per micrometer increment in r . In this study, V is computed based on one novel non‐dimensional wave‐steepness‐dependent sea spray model (Xu, Voermans, Ma, et al.,…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…where α = 3.3, β = 5.7, and γ = 2.8 (Andreas, 2003;L. Zhang et al, 2017) are the exchange coefficients that represent the interaction of individual sea spray droplet with ambient environment, ρ w is the water density, c pw is the water specific heat capacity, T′ is defined by the temperature difference between generated spray droplet and ambient air temperature, Q′ depicts the contribution of individual spray droplet to air-sea latent heat exchange due to phase changes (Andreas & Emanuel, 2001;Perrie et al, 2005;Xu, Voermans, Liu, et al, 2021;Xu et al, 2022), V is the volumetric concentration of in-time spray droplets, r 1 and r 2 are the smallest and largest sea spray droplets, r is the initial radius of generated sea spray droplets, and 𝐴𝐴 𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 is the sea spray generation function which denotes the number of generated sea spray droplets per second per square meter of ocean surface per micrometer increment in r. In this study, V is computed based on one novel non-dimensional wave-steepness-dependent sea spray model (Xu, Voermans, Ma, et al, 2021). Detailed impacts of sea spray on the momentum exchanges are outside the scope of this study, although part of this exchange may be implicitly included in the air-sea surface scheme of WRF through parameterizing the drag coefficient scheme with a plateau (Davis et al, 2008).…”

Section: Physical Processes Of Ocean Wavesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Tropical Cyclone Modeling With the Inclusion of Wave‐Coupled Processes: Sea Spray and Wave Turbulence

Xu,

Voermans,

Zhang

et al. 2023

Geophysical Research Letters

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Waves critically modulate the air‐sea fluxes, and upper‐ocean thermodynamics in a Tropical Cyclone (TC) system. This study improves the modeling of TC intensification by incorporating non‐breaking wave‐induced turbulence and sea spray from breaking waves into an atmosphere‐ocean‐wave coupled model. Notably, wind forecast error decreased by around 10% prior to TCs' peak intensity. The positive feedback of sea spray along with compensatory negative feedback from non‐breaking waves, overall enhanced TCs' intensity. These breaking and non‐breaking wave‐coupled processes consistently cool sea surface temperature, resulting in improvement of the modeled SST. Observed improvements in full‐year TC cases ranging from Categories I to IV in this study suggest that an accurate characterization of ocean wave‐coupled processes is crucial for improving TCs' intensity forecasts and advancing our understanding of severe weather events in both, the atmosphere and ocean.

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Impact of sea spray‐mediated heat fluxes on polar low development

Lin,

Spengler,

Rutgersson

et al. 2024

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

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Sea spray, originating from wave breaking under high wind conditions, can significantly affect turbulent heat fluxes at the air–sea interface. Even though polar lows (PLs) can become extreme weather features with gale‐force wind, the impact of sea spray on their development has rarely been investigated and is not considered in operational forecast models. In this study, the impact of sea spray on the development of two PLs over the Barents Sea is studied based on sensitivity experiments with an atmosphere–wave coupled model, where the spray‐mediated heat fluxes are parameterized. The results show that the impact of sea‐spray‐mediated heat fluxes on PL development is sensitive to the surface wind speed. In the case of the stronger PL, the higher surface wind speed results in significantly higher spray‐mediated heat fluxes. Consequently, these spray‐mediated heat fluxes intensify the convection and diabatic heating of the PL, resulting in its intensification. In comparison, the case with a weaker PL experiences less sea spray production and lower spray‐mediated heat fluxes due to its weaker surface wind speeds. Overall, we find that spray‐mediated sensible heat fluxes play an important role in the development of PLs, while the latent heat fluxes induced by sea spray have a relatively minor impact.

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Sea Spray Impacts on Tropical Cyclone Olwyn Using a Coupled Atmosphere‐Ocean‐Wave Model

Abstract: While tropical cyclone (TC) track forecasts have improved over the last three decades, the mean absolute errors of TC intensity forecasts have stagnated (

Cited by 9 publications

References 60 publications

Effects of ocean states coupling on the simulated Super Typhoon Megi (2010) in the South China Sea

Effects of ocean states coupling on the simulated Super Typhoon Megi (2010) in the South China Sea

Tropical Cyclone Modeling With the Inclusion of Wave‐Coupled Processes: Sea Spray and Wave Turbulence

Impact of sea spray‐mediated heat fluxes on polar low development

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