Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-2010
Publication Title
Boundary-Layer Meteorology
Keywords
Air-Sea interface, Drag coefficient, Hurricane, Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, Marginal stability
ISSN
0006-8314
Volume
136
Issue/No.
3
First Page
365
Last Page
376
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.
Additional Comments
National Science Foundation grant #: OCE-0752606
NSUWorks Citation
Alexander Soloviev and Roger Lukas. 2010. Effects of Bubbles and Sea Spray on Air–Sea Exchange in Hurricane Conditions .Boundary-Layer Meteorology , (3) : 365 -376. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/occ_facarticles/623.
ORCID ID
0000-0001-6519-1547
DOI
10.1007/s10546-010-9505-0
Comments
©The Author(s) 2010.
The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10546-010-9505-0