Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

ORCID

0000-0001-6519-1547

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Boundary-Layer Meteorology

ISSN

0006-8314

Publication Date

9-2010

Keywords

Air-Sea interface, Drag coefficient, Hurricane, Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, Marginal stability

Abstract

The lower limit on the drag coefficient under hurricane force winds is determined by the break-up of the air–sea interface due to Kelvin–Helmholtz instability and formation of the two-phase transition layer consisting of sea spray and air bubbles. As a consequence, a regime of marginal stability develops. In this regime, the air–sea drag coefficient is determined by the turbulence characteristics of the two-phase transition layer. The upper limit on the drag coefficient is determined by the Charnock-type wave resistance. Most of the observational estimates of the drag coefficient obtained in hurricane conditions and in laboratory experiments appear to lie between the two extreme regimes: wave resistance and marginal stability.

DOI

10.1007/s10546-010-9505-0

Volume

136

Issue

3

First Page

365

Last Page

376

Comments

©The Author(s) 2010.

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10546-010-9505-0

Additional Comments

National Science Foundation grant #: OCE-0752606

Peer Reviewed

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