The impact of waves and sea spray on modelling storm track and development

• In high wind speed conditions, sea spray generated by intensely breaking waves greatly influences the wind stress and heat fluxes. Measurements indicate that the drag coefficient decreases at high wind speeds. The sea spray generation function (SSGF), an important term of wind stress parameterisation at high wind speeds, is usually treated as a function of wind speed/friction velocity. In this study, we introduce a wave-state-dependent SSGF and wave-age-dependent Charnock number into a high wind speed–wind stress parameterisation. The newly proposed wind stress parameterisation and sea spray heat flux parameterisation were applied to an atmosphere–wave coupled model to study the mid-latitude storm development of six storm cases. Compared with measurements from the FINO1 platform in the North Sea, the new wind stress parameterisation can reduce wind speed simulation errors in the high wind speed range. Considering only sea spray impact on wind stress (and not on heat fluxes) will intensify the storms (in terms of minimum sea level pressure and maximum wind speed), but has little effect on the storm tracks. Considering the impact of sea spray on heat fluxes only (not on wind stress) can improve the model performance regarding air temperature, but it has little effect on the storm intensity and storm track performance. If the impact of sea spray on both the wind stress and heat fluxes is taken into account, the model performs best in all experiments for minimum sea level pressure, maximum wind speed and air temperature.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

sea spray

wind stress

heat fluxes

storms

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)