Paul A. Frederickson

Estimating the Refractive Index Structure Parameter (Cn2) over the Ocean Using Bulk Methods

Abstract Infrared scintillation measurements were obtained along a 7-km path over San Diego Bay concurrently with meteorological measurements obtained from a buoy at the midpoint of the path. Bulk estimates of the refractive index structure parameter were computed from the buoy data and compared with scintillation-derived values. The bulk estimates agreed well with the scintillation measurements in unstable conditions. In stable conditions the bulk estimates became increasingly higher than the scintillation values as the air–sea temperature difference increased. This disagreement may be due to enhanced wave-induced mixing of the lower atmosphere that decreases the vertical temperature and humidity gradients in stable conditions from the assumed Monin–Obukhov similarity (MOS) theory forms, resulting in bulk values that are too high. The bulk estimates decrease rapidly when the absolute air–sea temperature difference approaches small positive values. These predicted decreases in were not observed in either ...

The RED Experiment: An Assessment of Boundary Layer Effects in a Trade Winds Regime on Microwave and Infrared Propagation over the Sea

The Rough Evaporation Duct (RED) experiment was performed off of the Hawaiian Island of Oahu from late August to mid-September 2001 to test the hypothesis that a rough sea surface modifies the evaporation duct. Two land sites were instrumented, one with microwave receivers and the other with an infrared receiver. Two bouys were deployed, a small boat was instrumented and two aircrafts flew various tracks to sense both sea and atmospheric conditions. It was observed that waves do modify the scalars within the air-sea surface layer. There was a lack of agreement of the scalar profile constants and those typically observed over land. Furthermore, evidence was obtained indicating that the Monin-Obukhov similarity theory, combined with high-quality meteorological measurements, can be used by propagation models to accurately predict microwave signal levels.

Surface stress in offshore flow and quasi-frictional decoupling

Aircraft data collected at approximately 15 m above the sea surface in the coastal zone are analyzed to examine the spatial distribution of surface stress. Advection of stronger turbulence from land dominates the near-surface turbulence for the first few kilometers offshore. With offshore flow of warm air over cold water, strong stratification leads to very small surface stress. Because the stability restricts the momentum transfer to the waves, the aerodynamic surface roughness decreases to very small values, which in turn decreases atmospheric mixing. The redevelopment of the boundary layer farther downstream is examined. Computation of fluxes from observations for stable cases is difficult due to a variety of errors including large random flux errors, possible instrumental loss of small-scale flux, difference between the surface flux and that at the observational level, and inadvertent capture of mesoscale motions in the computed turbulent fluctuations. Although the errors appear to be substantial, the aircraft momentum fluxes compare favorably with those from sonic anemometers on two buoys and a tower at the end of a 570-m pier, even with near collapse of the turbulence.

Sea‐surface aerodynamic roughness

[1] This study surveys and evaluates similarity theory for estimating the sea-surface drag coefficient with the bulk aerodynamic method. The most commonly used formulations of the aerodynamic roughness length, required by similarity theory, are examined using data sets from four different field programs. These relationships include the Charnock formulation and the wave age modified Charnock relationship. The goal is to assess the overall performance of simple formulations of the roughness length including cases where the Charnock formulation is not expected to apply, and to assess the errors resulting from application of the Charnock formulation to all conditions, as is done in many numerical models where an explicit wave model cannot be accommodated. This examination indicates that spurious self-correlation explains more variance than actual physical relationships, even after eliminating weak wind cases. Frequent cases of anomalously low stress and very small values of the Charnock coefficient further reduce the usefulness of this formulation for the present data sets. Causes of the frequent very small values of the Charnock coefficient are briefly investigated. INDEX TERMS: 0312 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Air/sea constituent fluxes (3339, 4504); 3339 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Ocean/atmosphere interactions (0312, 4504); 4504 Oceanography: Physical: Air/sea interactions (0312); 3307 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Boundary layer processes; KEYWORDS: roughness length, aerodynamic roughness length, Charnock formulation, sea-surface stress, wave state, Monin-Obukhov similarity

Low-altitude infrared propagation in a coastal zone: refraction and scattering

Midwave and long-wave infrared propagation were measured in the marine atmosphere close to the surface of the ocean. Data were collected near San Diego Bay for two weeks in November 1996 over a 15-km horizontal path. The data are interpreted in terms of effects expected from molecules, aerosol particles, and refraction. Aerosol particles are a dominant influence in this coastal zone. They induce a diurnal variation in transmission as their character changes with regular changes in wind direction. A refractive propagation factor calculation is introduced, and it is systematically applied to the model and to the data analysis. It is shown that this refractive propagation factor is a necessary component of a complete near-sea-surface infrared transmission model.

A Study of Wind Stress Determination Methods from a Ship and an Offshore Tower

Comparisons are made between surface wind stress measurements obtained by the inertial-dissipation and direct covariance methods on a stable offshore tower and by the inertial-dissipation and bulk methods on a ship. The shipboard inertial-dissipation friction velocity measurements agreed very well with both the tower inertialdissipation and direct covariance values, to within 62% in the mean and with a 10% or lower rms scatter. The inertial-dissipation determinations also exhibited less scatter than the tower direct covariance measurements. A detailed error analysis indicates that shipboard inertial-dissipation wind stress values can have an accuracy of better than 15% in near-neutral conditions, as compared to an accuracy of roughly 30% for the bulk method. The accuracy of shipboard inertial-dissipation values was shown to be equal to that of direct covariance measurements from a tower. Errors in inertial-dissipation wind stress values are most likely due primarily to deviations from the assumed balance between turbulent kinetic energy production and dissipation and to errors in determining the wind speed variance spectra. Errors in direct covariance measurements are most likely due primarily to finite time averaging and to flow distortion effects, unless great care is taken to minimize or correct for flow distortion. The high accuracy of inertial-dissipation wind stress values found in this study, combined with the well-known difficulties in shipboard direct covariance measurements due to platform motion and flow distortion, demonstrate that the inertial-dissipation method is the best option at present for determining the wind stress from a ship.

Recent results on modeling the refractive-index structure parameter over the ocean surface using bulk methods

Infrared scintillation measurements were obtained along a 7.2 km path over San Diego Bay, concurrently with mean meteorological and turbulence measurements obtained from a buoy located along the path. Bulk estimates and turbulence measurements of Cn2 were computed from the buoy data and compared with the optical scintillation-derived Cn2 values. Similar to the results of previous experiments, the bulk Cn2 estimates agreed well with both the scintillation and turbulence measurements in unstable conditions, increasingly underestimated Cn2 as conditions approached neutral, and agreed less well with scintillation and turbulence Cn2 values in stable conditions. The mean differences between bulk Cn2 estimates and both the turbulence and scintillation measurements when conditions were not near-neutral exhibited an air-sea temperature difference and wind speed dependence, possibly indicating that the forms of the empirical stability functions used by the bulk model are incorrect. The turbulent Cn2 measurements from the buoy showed excellent agreement with the scintillation values in unstable conditions, but had surprisingly large differences in weakly stable conditions. This disagreement may be related to the fact that humidity fluctuations begin to increasingly influence refractive index fluctuations when the air-sea temperature difference is small and are not properly taken into account by the sonic temperature measurements. As the absolute air-sea temperature difference approaches zero the bulk Cn2 estimates decrease much more rapidly and to much smaller values than either the scintillation or turbulence measurements. Fortunately, in such near-neutral conditions scintillation is usually small enough to have little effect on many optical system applications.

Observational Buoy Studies of Coastal Air-Sea Fluxes

Recent advancements in measurement and analysis techniques have allowed air‐sea fluxes to be measured directly from moving platforms at sea relatively easily. These advances should lead to improved surface flux parameterizations, and thus to improved coupled atmosphere‐ocean modeling. The Naval Postgraduate School has developed a ‘‘flux buoy’’ (FB) that directly measures air‐sea fluxes, mean meteorological parameters, and one-dimensional and directional wave spectra. In this study, the FB instrumentation and data analysis techniques are described, and the data collected during two U.S. east coast buoy deployments are used to examine the impact of atmospheric and surface wave properties on air‐sea momentum transfer in coastal ocean regions. Data obtained off Duck, North Carolina, clearly show that, for a given wind speed, neutral drag coefficients in offshore winds are higher than those in onshore winds. Offshore wind drag coefficients observed over the wind speed range from 5 to 21 m s 21 were modeled equally well by a linear regression on wind speed, and a Charnock model with a constant of 0.016. Measurements from an FB deployment off Wallops Island, Virginia, show that neutral drag coefficients in onshore winds increase as the wind‐wave direction differences increase, especially beyond 6608.

Near-surface scintillation in a coastal ocean region

Infrared scintillation measurements were obtained along a 7 km path over San Diego Bay concurrently with meteorological measurements obtained from a buoy at the midpoint of the path. Bulk estimates of the refractive index structure parameter Cn2, were computed from the buoy data and compared with scintillation-derived Cn2 values. The bulk Cn2 estimates agreed well with the scintillation measurements in unstable conditions. In stable conditions the bulk Cn2 estimates were higher than the scintillation data, by up to an order of magnitude on average. This disagreement may be due to the effects of ocean waves in decreasing the vertical temperature and humidity gradients in stable conditions from the assumed Monin-Obukhov similarity theory forms, resulting in bulk Cn2 values that are too high. The bulk Cn2 estimates decrease rapidly when the absolute air-sea temperature difference approaches small positive values. These predicted decreases in Cn2 were not observed in the path-averaged scintillation measurements or in single-point turbulence measurements, demonstrating that bulk models which estimate structure parameters based on mean air-sea differences are not valid when the mean air-sea difference approaches zero. It is believed that obtaining a better understanding of surface wave modification of near- surface atmospheric gradients represents the most promising means toward improving the bulk model.

Comparison of near-surface bulk and scintillation C2n measurements during EOPACE

During the Electro-Optical Propagation Assessment in a Coastal Environment (EOPACE) experiment of May-June 1998, IR scintillation measurements were obtained along a 7 km path over San Diego Bay. Simultaneous meteorological measurement were obtained from a buoy located at the midpoint of the transmission path. Bulk estimates of the refractive index structure parameter, Cn2 were computed from the buoy data and compared with scintillation-derived Cn2 values. The bulk Cn2 estimates agreed well with the scintillation measurements in unstable conditions. The agreement between the two methods was poor for near-neutral and stable conditions. In particular, when the air-sea temperature difference has small positive values the bulk model predicts the vertical refractive index gradient approaches zero, resulting in rapid decrease in bulk Cn2 estimates. These predicted decreases in Cn2 were not observed in the path-averaged scintillation measurements.