Heidi Pettersson

A case study of air-sea interaction during swell conditions

Air-sea interaction data from a situation with pronounced unidirectional swell have been analyzed. Measurements of turbulence at three levels (10, 18, and 26 m above mean sea level) together with directional wave buoy data from the site Ostergarnsholm in the Baltic Sea were used. The situation, which lasted for ∼48 hours, appeared in the aftermath of a gale. The wind direction during the swell situation turned slowly within a 90° sector. Both during the gale phase and the swell phase the over-water fetch was >150 km. The wind speed during the swell phase was typically 4 m s−1. During the swell phase a wind maximum near or below the lowest wind speed measuring level 10 m was observed. The net momentum flux was very small, resulting in CD values ∼0.7 × 10−3. Throughout the lowest 26 m, covered by the tower measurements, turbulence intensities in all three components remained high despite the low value of the kinematic momentum flux -u′w′¯ resulting in a reduction of the correlation coefficient for the longitudinal and vertical velocity from its typical value around −0.35 to between −0.2 and 0 (and with some positive values at the higher measuring levels), appearing abruptly at wave age c0/U10 equal to 1.2. Turbulence spectra of the horizontal components were shown not to scale with height above the water surface, in contrast to vertical velocity spectra for which such a variation was observed in the low-frequency range. In addition, spectral peaks in the horizontal wind spectra were found at a frequency as low as 10−3 Hz. From a comparison with results from a previous study it was concluded that this turbulence is of the “inactive” kind, being brought down from the upper parts of the boundary layer by pressure transport.

A global perspective on Langmuir turbulence in the ocean surface boundary layer

The turbulent mixing in thin ocean surface boundary layers (OSBL), which occupy the upper 100 m or so of the ocean, control the exchange of heat and trace gases between the atmosphere and ocean. Here we show that current parameterizations of this turbulent mixing lead to systematic and substantial errors in the depth of the OSBL in global climate models, which then leads to biases in sea surface temperature. One reason, we argue, is that current parameterizations are missing key surface-wave processes that force Langmuir turbulence that deepens the OSBL more rapidly than steady wind forcing. Scaling arguments are presented to identify two dimensionless parameters that measure the importance of wave forcing against wind forcing, and against buoyancy forcing. A global perspective on the occurrence of wave-forced turbulence is developed using re-analysis data to compute these parameters globally. The diagnostic study developed here suggests that turbulent energy available for mixing the OSBL is under-estimated without forcing by surface waves. Wave-forcing and hence Langmuir turbulence could be important over wide areas of the ocean and in all seasons in the Southern Ocean. We conclude that surface-wave-forced Langmuir turbulence is an important process in the OSBL that requires parameterization. Citation: Belcher, S. E., et al. (2012), A global perspective on Langmuir turbulence in the ocean surface boundary layer, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L18605, doi: 10.1029/2012GL052932.

Wave-Induced Wind in the Marine Boundary Layer

Recent field observations and large-eddy simulations have shown that the impact of fast swell on the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) might be stronger than previously assumed. For low to moderate winds blowing in the same direction as the waves, swell propagates faster than the mean wind. The momentum flux above the sea surface will then have two major components: the turbulent shear stress, directed downward, and the swell-induced stress, directed upward. For sufficiently high wave age values, the wave-induced component becomes increasingly dominant, and the total momentum flux will be directed into the atmosphere. Recent field measurements have shown that this upward momentum transfer from the ocean into the atmosphere has a considerable impact on the surface layer flow dynamics and on the turbulence structure of the overall MABL. The vertical wind profile will no longer exhibit a logarithmic shape because an acceleration of the airflow near the surface will take place, generating a low-level wave-driven wind maximum (a wind jet). As waves propagate away from their generation area as swell, some of the wave momentum will be returned to the atmosphere in the form of wave-driven winds. A model that qualitatively reproduces the wave-following atmospheric flow and the wave-generated wind maximum, as seen from measurements, is proposed. The model assumes a stationary momentum and turbulent kinetic energy balance and uses the dampening of the waves at the surface to describe the momentum flux from the waves to the atmosphere. In this study, simultaneous observations of wind profiles, turbulent fluxes, and wave spectra during swell events are presented and compared with the model. In the absence of an established model for the linear damping ratio during swell conditions, the model is combined with observations to estimate the wave damping. For the cases in which the observations showed a pronounced swell signal and almost no wind waves, the agreement between observed and modeled wind profiles is remarkably good. The resulting attenuation length is found to be relatively short, which suggests that the estimated damping ratios are too large. The authors attribute this, at least partly, to processes not accounted for by the model, such as the existence of an atmospheric background wind. In the model, this extra momentum must be supplied by the waves in terms of a larger damping ratio.

The Atmospheric Boundary Layer during Swell: A Field Study and Interpretation of the Turbulent Kinetic Energy Budget for High Wave Ages

Analysis of the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) budget for five slightly unstable cases with swell has been performed based on measurements of mechanical production, buoyancy production, turbulent transport, and dissipation at five levels over the sea, from 2.5 to 26 m. The time rate of change and advection of TKE were found to be small, so the TKE residual is interpreted as an estimate of the pressure transport term (Tp). In two cases with high wave age, the Tp term is a gain at all heights. For three cases with smaller wave age, Tp is a loss in the TKE budget below 5–10 m and a gain for greater heights, where the decrease is exponential, thus showing the combined effects of swell waves and a range of waves traveling slower than the wind. The TKE budget for a case with growing sea but similar wind speed and stability as some of the swell cases has Tp close to zero at all heights. It is shown that the observed characteristic wind profile with either a low-level maximum in the 5–10-m range or a distinct ‘‘knee’’ at that height is an effect of the Tp term.

Observational Study of Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer Characteristics during Swell

By combining simultaneous data from an instrumented Air–Sea Interaction Spar (ASIS) buoy and a 30-m tower, profiles of wind and turbulence characteristics have been obtained at several heights from about 1 to 30 m above the water surface during swell conditions. Five cases formed as averages over time periods ranging from 2.5 to 9.5 h, representing quasi-steady conditions, have been selected. They represent a range of typical wave age and include wind-following swell cases and cross-swell cases. For relatively large wave age, the wind profile exhibits a well-defined maximum in the height range 5–10 m; for more modest wave age, this maximum turns into a sharp ‘‘knee’’ in the wind profile. Below the maximum (or knee), the wind increases rapidly with height; above that point the wind is very nearly constant up to the highest measuring level on the tower, 30 m. Analysis of balloon data from one day with swell indicates that the layer with constant wind in fact extends to the top of the boundary layer, in this case ;200 m. Analysis of the complete swell dataset from the 45 days of the 2003 Baltic Swell experiment shows that the results concerning wind profile shape obtained from the selected cases are generally valid in this experiment. Analysis of the nondimensional wind profile fm shows that Monin–Obukhov scaling is not valid during swell. Wind and turbulence characteristics are found not to vary to a significant degree with the wind/swell angle within the range of angles encountered, 6908.

Transfer Across the Air-Sea Interface

The efficiency of transfer of gases and particles across the air-sea interface is controlled by several physical, biological and chemical processes in the atmosphere and water which are described here (including waves, large- and small-scale turbulence, bubbles, sea spray, rain and surface films). For a deeper understanding of relevant transport mechanisms, several models have been developed, ranging from conceptual models to numerical models. Most frequently the transfer is described by various functional dependencies of the wind speed, but more detailed descriptions need additional information. The study of gas transfer mechanisms uses a variety of experimental methods ranging from laboratory studies to carbon budgets, mass balance methods, micrometeorological techniques and thermographic techniques. Different methods resolve the transfer at different scales of time and space; this is important to take into account when comparing different results. Air-sea transfer is relevant in a wide range of applications, for example, local and regional fluxes, global models, remote sensing and computations of global inventories. The sensitivity of global models to the description of transfer velocity is limited; it is however likely that the formulations are more important when the resolution increases and other processes in models are improved. For global flux estimates using inventories or remote sensing products the accuracy of the transfer formulation as well as the accuracy of the wind field is crucial.

Wave Directions in a Narrow Bay

Abstract In slanting fetch conditions the direction of actively growing waves is strongly controlled by the fetch geometry. The effect was found to be pronounced in the long and narrow Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea, where it significantly modifies the directional wave climate. Three models with different assumptions on the directional coupling between the wave components were used to analyze the physics responsible for the directional behavior of the waves in the gulf. The directionally decoupled model produced the direction at the spectral peak correctly when the slanting fetch geometry was narrow but gave a weaker steering than observed when the fetch geometry was broader. The method of Donelan estimated well the direction at the spectral peak in well-defined slanting fetch conditions, but overestimated the longer fetch components during wave growth from a more complex shoreline. Neither the decoupled nor the Donelan model reproduced the observed shifting of direction with the frequency. The perform...

Comparing a 41-year model hindcast with decades of wave measurements from the Baltic Sea

Abstract We present ice-free and ice-included statistics for the Baltic Sea using a wave hindcast validated against data from 13 wave measurement sites. In the hindcast 84% of wave events with a significant wave height over 7 m occurred between November and January. The effect of the ice cover is largest in the Bay of Bothnia, where the mean significant wave height is reduced by 30% when the ice time is included in the statistics. The difference between these two statistics are less than 0.05 m below a latitude of 59.5°. The seasonal ice cover also causes measurement gaps by forcing an early recovery of the instruments. Including the time not captured by the wave buoy can affect the estimates for the significant wave height by roughly 20%. The impact below the 99th percentiles are still under 5%. The significant wave height is modelled accurately even close to the shore, but the highest peak periods are underestimated in a narrow bay. Sensitivity test show that this underestimation is most likely caused by an excessive refraction towards the shore. Reconsidering the role of the spatial resolution and the physical processes affecting the low-frequency waves is suggested as a possible solution.

Removing low-frequency artefacts from Datawell DWR-G4 wave buoy measurements

In this study we describe a previously unreported error in the vertical-displacement time series made with GPS-based Datawell DWR-G4 wave buoys and introduce a simple method to correct the resulting wave spectra. The artefact in the time series is found to resemble a sawtooth wave, which produces an erroneous trend following an f power law in frequency space. The correction method quantifies the amount of erroneous trend below a certain maximum frequency and removes the spurious energy from all frequencies assuming the above-mentioned f power law. The presented correction method is validated against an experimental field test, and its impact on the measured significant wave height is quantified. The method’s sensitivity to the choice of the maximum frequency is also briefly discussed.