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The effects of wind-driven waves and ocean spray on the drag coefficient and near-surface wind profiles over the ocean

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Abstract

By introducing a wave-induced component and a spray-induced component to the total stress, a mathematical model based on the Ekman theory is proposed to detail the influence of wind-driven waves and ocean spray on the momentum transport in a marine atmosphere boundary layer (MABL). An analytic solution of the modified Ekman model can be obtained. The effect of the wave-induced stress is evaluated by a wind wave spectrum and a wave growth rate. It is found that the wave-induced stress and spray stress have a small impact compared with the turbulent stress on the drag coefficient and the wind profiles for low-to-medium wind speed. The spray contribution to the surface stress should be much more taken into account than the winddriven waves when the wind speed reaches above 25 m/s through the action of a “spray stress”. As a result, the drag coefficient starts to decrease with increasing wind speed for high wind speed. The effects of the winddriven waves and spray droplets on the near-surface wind profiles are illustrated for different wave ages, which indicates that the production of the spray droplets leads the wind velocity to increase in the MABL. The solutions are also compared with the existed field observational data. Illustrative examples and the comparisons between field observations and the theoretical solutions demonstrate that the spray stress has more significant effect on the marine atmosphere boundary layer in the condition of the high wind speed compared with wave-induced stress.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ocean College, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310000, China

    Ting Zhang, Jinbao Song & Shuang Li

  2. School of Mathematical Science, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot, 010000, China

    Ting Zhang & Liangui Yang

Authors
  1. Ting Zhang
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  2. Jinbao Song
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  3. Shuang Li
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  4. Liangui Yang
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Correspondence to Jinbao Song.

Additional information

Foundation item: The National Natural Science Foundations of China under contract Nos 41576013 and 11362012; the National High Technology Research and Development Program (863 Program) of China under contract No. 2013AA122803; the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under contract No. XDA11010104.

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Zhang, T., Song, J., Li, S. et al. The effects of wind-driven waves and ocean spray on the drag coefficient and near-surface wind profiles over the ocean. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 35, 79–85 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-016-0950-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-016-0950-6

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