Ludovic Bariteau

On Trade Wind Cumulus Cold Pools

AbstractShallow precipitating cumuli within the easterly trades were investigated using shipboard measurements, scanning radar data, and visible satellite imagery from 2 weeks in January 2005 of the Rain in Cumulus over the Ocean (RICO) experiment. Shipboard rainfall rates of up to 2 mm h−1 were recorded almost daily, if only for 10–30 min typically, almost always from clouds within mesoscale arcs. The precipitating cumuli, capable of reaching above 4 km, cooled surface air by 1–2 K, in all cases lowered surface specific humidities by up to 1.5 g kg−1, reduced surface equivalent potential temperatures by up to 6 K, and were often associated with short-lived increases in wind speed. Upper-level downdrafts were inferred to explain double-lobed moisture and temperature sounding profiles, as well as multiple inversions in wind profiler data. In two cases investigated further, the precipitating convection propagated faster westward than the mean surface wind by about 2–3 m s−1, consistent with a density curren...

Surface Flux Observations on the Southeastern Tropical Pacific Ocean and Attribution of SST Errors in Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Models

Abstract A new dataset synthesizes in situ and remote sensing observations from research ships deployed to the southeastern tropical Pacific stratocumulus region for 7 years in boreal fall. Surface meteorology, turbulent and radiative fluxes, aerosols, cloud properties, and rawinsonde profiles were measured on nine ship transects along 20°S from 75° to 85°W. Fluxes at the ocean surface are essential to the equilibrium SST. Solar radiation is the only warming net heat flux, with 180–200 W m−2 in boreal fall. The strongest cooling is evaporation (60–100 W m−2), followed by net thermal infrared radiation (30 W m−2) and sensible heat flux (<10 W m−2). The 70 W m−2 imbalance of heating at the surface reflects the seasonal SST tendency and some 30 W m−2 cooling that is mostly due to ocean transport. Coupled models simulate significant SST errors in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Three different observation-based gridded ocean surface flux products agree with ship and buoy observations, while fluxes simulat...

The MJO and Air–Sea Interaction in TOGA COARE and DYNAMO

AbstractDynamics of the Madden–Julian Oscillation (DYNAMO) and Tropical Ocean and Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE) observations and reanalysis-based surface flux products are used to test theories of atmosphere–ocean interaction that explain the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO). Negative intraseasonal outgoing longwave radiation, indicating deep convective clouds, is in phase with increased surface wind stress, decreased solar heating, and increased surface turbulent heat flux—mostly evaporation—from the ocean to the atmosphere. Net heat flux cools the upper ocean in the convective phase. Sea surface temperature (SST) warms during the suppressed phase, reaching a maximum before the onset of MJO convection. The timing of convection, surface flux, and SST is consistent from the central Indian Ocean (70°E) to the western Pacific Ocean (160°E).Mean surface evaporation observed in TOGA COARE and DYNAMO (110 W m−2) accounts for about half of the moisture supply for the ...

Turbulent bulk transfer coefficients and ozone deposition velocity in the International Consortium for Atmospheric Research into Transport and Transformation

[1] In this paper, we examine observations of shallow, stable boundary layers in the cool waters of the Gulf of Maine between Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Nova Scotia, obtained in the 2004 New England Air Quality Study (NEAQS-04), which was part of the International Consortium for Atmospheric Research into Transport and Transformation (ICARTT). The observations described herein were made from the NOAA Research Vessel Ronald H. Brown. The ship was instrumented for measurements of meteorological, gas-phase and aerosol atmospheric chemistry variables. Meteorological instrumentation included a Doppler lidar, a radar wind profiler, rawinsonde equipment, and a surface flux package. In this study, we focus on direct comparisons of the NEAQS-04 flux observations with the COARE bulk flux algorithm to investigate possible coastal influences on air-sea interactions. We found significant suppression of the transfer coefficients for momentum, sensible heat, and latent heat; the suppression was correlated with lighter winds, more stable surface layers, S-SE wind direction, and lower boundary layer heights. Analysis of the details shows the suppression is not a measurement, stability correction, or surface wave effect. The correlation with boundary layer height is consistent with an interpretation that our measurements at 18-m height do not realize the full surface flux in shallow boundary layers. We also find that a bulk Richardson number threshold of 0.1 gives a better estimate of boundary layer height than 0.25 or 0.5. Mean ozone deposition velocity is estimated as 0.44 mm s−1, corresponding to a boundary removal timescale of about 1 day.

Atmosphere‐ocean ozone fluxes during the TexAQS 2006, STRATUS 2006, GOMECC 2007, GasEx 2008, and AMMA 2008 cruises

A ship-based eddy covariance ozone flux system was deployed to investigate the magnitude and variability of ozone surface fluxes over the open ocean. The flux experiments were conducted on five cruises on board the NOAA research vessel Ronald Brown during 2006-2008. The cruises covered the Gulf of Mexico, the southern as well as northern Atlantic, the Southern Ocean, and the persistent stratus cloud region off Chile in the eastern Pacific Ocean. These experiments resulted in the first ship-borne open-ocean ozone flux measurement records. The median of 10 min oceanic ozone deposition velocity (v(d)) results from a combined similar to 1700 h of observations ranged from 0.009 to 0.034 cm s(-1). For the Gulf of Mexico cruise (Texas Air Quality Study (TexAQS)) the median v(d) (interquartile range) was 0.034 (0.009-0.065) cm s(-1) (total number of 10 min measurement intervals, N-f = 1953). For the STRATUS cruise off the Chilean coast, the median v(d) was 0.009 (0.004-0.037) cm s(-1) (N-f = 1336). For the cruise from the Gulf of Mexico and up the eastern U. S. coast (Gulf of Mexico and East Coast Carbon cruise (GOMECC)) a combined value of 0.018 (0.006-0.045) cm s(-1) (N-f = 1784) was obtained (from 0.019 (-0.014-0.043) cm s(-1), N-f = 663 in the Gulf of Mexico, and 0.018 (-0.004-0.045) cm s(-1), N-f = 1121 in the North Atlantic region). The Southern Ocean Gas Exchange Experiment (GasEx) and African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA), the Southern Ocean and northeastern Atlantic cruises, respectively, resulted in median ozone v(d) of 0.009 (-0.005-0.026) cm s(-1) (N-f = 2745) and 0.020 (-0.003-0.044) cms(-1) (N-f = 1147). These directly measured ozone deposition values are at the lower end of previously reported data in the literature (0.01-0.12 cm s(-1)) for ocean water. Data illustrate a positive correlation (increase) of the oceanic ozone uptake rate with wind speed, albeit the behavior of the relationship appears to differ during these cruises. The encountered wide range of meteorological and ocean biogeochemical conditions is used to investigate fundamental drivers of oceanic O-3 deposition and for the evaluation of a recently developed global oceanic O-3 deposition modeling system.

A Multisensor Comparison of Ocean Wave Frequency Spectra from a Research Vessel during the Southern Ocean Gas Exchange Experiment

AbstractObtaining accurate measurements of wave statistics from research vessels remains a challenge due to the platform motion. One principal correction is the removal of ship heave and Doppler effects from point measurements. Here, open-ocean wave measurements were collected using a laser altimeter, a Doppler radar microwave sensor, a radar-based system, and inertial measurement units. Multiple instruments were deployed to capture the low- and high-frequency sea surface displacements. Doppler and motion correction algorithms were applied to obtain a full 1D (0.035–1.3 ± 0.2 Hz) wave spectrum. The radar-based system combined with the laser altimeter provided the optimal low- and high-frequency combination, producing a frequency spectrum in the range from 0.035 to 1.2 Hz for cruising speeds ≤3 m s−1 with a spectral rolloff of f−4 Hz and noise floor of −20/−30 dB. While on station, the significant wave height estimates were comparable within 10%–15% among instrumentation. Discrepancies in the total energy ...

Direct measurements of CO2 flux in the Greenland Sea

[1] During summer 2006 eddy correlation CO2 fluxes were measured in the Greenland Sea using a novel system set‐up with two shrouded LICOR‐7500 detectors. One detector was used exclusively to determine, and allow the removal of, the bias on CO2 fluxes due to sensor motion. A recently published correction method for the CO2‐H2O cross‐correlation was applied to the data set. We show that even with shrouded sensors the data require significant correction due to this cross‐correlation. This correction adjusts the average CO2 flux by an order of magnitude from −6.7 × 10 −2 mol m −2 day −1 to −0.61 × 10 −2 mol m −2 day −1 , making the corrected fluxes comparable to those calculated using established parameterizations for transfer velocity. Citation: Lauvset, S. K., W. R. McGillis, L. Bariteau, C. W. Fairall, T. Johannessen, A. Olsen, and C. J. Zappa (2011), Direct measurements of CO2 flux in the Greenland Sea, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L12603, doi:10.1029/2011GL047722.

Wind Speed and Sea State Dependencies of Air‐Sea Gas Transfer: Results From the High Wind Speed Gas Exchange Study (HiWinGS)

A variety of physical mechanisms are jointly responsible for facilitating air-sea gas transfer through turbulent processes at the atmosphere-ocean interface. The nature and relative importance of these mechanisms evolves with increasing wind speed. Theoretical and modeling approaches are advancing, but the limited quantity of observational data at high wind speeds hinders the assessment of these efforts. The HiWinGS project successfully measured gas transfer coefficients (k660) with coincident wave statistics under conditions with hourly mean wind speeds up to 24 m s−1 and significant wave heights to 8 m. Measurements of k660 for carbon dioxide (CO2) and dimethylsulfide (DMS) show an increasing trend with respect to 10-meter neutral wind speed (U10N), following a power-law relationship of the form: k660 co2~U10N1.68 and k660 dms~U10N1.33. Among seven high wind speed events, CO2 transfer responded to the intensity of wave breaking, which depended on both wind speed and sea state in a complex manner, with k660 co2 increasing as the wind sea approaches full development. A similar response is not observed for DMS. These results confirm the importance of breaking waves and bubble injection mechanisms in facilitating CO2 transfer. A modified version of the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment Gas transfer algorithm (COAREG ver. 3.5), incorporating a sea state-dependent calculation of bubble-mediated transfer, successfully reproduces the mean trend in observed k660 with wind speed for both gases. Significant suppression of gas transfer by large waves was not observed during HiWinGS, in contrast to results from two prior field programs.

Sonic Anemometer as a Small Acoustic Tomography Array

The spatial resolution of a sonic anemometer is limited by the distance between its transducers, and for studies of small-scale turbulence and theories of turbulence, it is desirable to increase this spatial resolution. We here consider resolution improvements obtainable by treating the sonic anemometer as a small tomography array, with application of appropriate inverse algorithms for the reconstruction of temperature and velocity. A particular modification of the sonic anemometer is considered when the number of its transducers is doubled and the time-dependent stochastic inversion algorithm is used for reconstruction. Numerical simulations of the sonic anemometer and its suggested modification are implemented with the temperature and velocity fields modelled as discrete eddies moving through the sonic’s volume. The tomographic approach is shown to provide better reconstructions of the temperature and velocity fields, with spatial resolution increased by as much as a factor of ten. The spatial resolution depends on the inverse algorithm and also improves by increasing the number of transducers.

Stratus 11 : Eleventh Setting of the Stratus Ocean Reference Station Cruise on board RV Moana Wave, March 31 - April 16, 2011, Arica - Arica, Chile

Funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Grant No. NA0900AR4320129