Scale Dependence of Air-Sea Fluxes over the Western Equatorial Pacific

Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The goal of this study is to examine the horizontal scale dependence of vertical eddy flux in the tropical marine surface boundary layer and how this scale dependence of flux relates to the bulk aerodynamic relationship and the parameterization of subgrid-scale flux. The fluxes of heat, moisture, and momentum are computed from data collected from 27 NCAR Electra flight legs in TOGA COARE (The Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment) with flight elevations lower than 40 m and flight runs longer than 60 km. The dependence of the fluxes on two length scales are studied: the cutoff length scale, defining the averaging length over which mean components are obtained in order to partition field variables into mean and perturbation components; and the flux averaging length scale, defining the length over which products of perturbations are averaged in order to estimate vertical fluxes. Based on the characteristics of the scale dependence of fluxes, the total flux of ... Abstract The goal of this study is to examine the horizontal scale dependence of vertical eddy flux in the tropical marine surface boundary layer and how this scale dependence of flux relates to the bulk aerodynamic relationship and the parameterization of subgrid-scale flux. The fluxes of heat, moisture, and momentum are computed from data collected from 27 NCAR Electra flight legs in TOGA COARE (The Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment) with flight elevations lower than 40 m and flight runs longer than 60 km. The dependence of the fluxes on two length scales are studied: the cutoff length scale, defining the averaging length over which mean components are obtained in order to partition field variables into mean and perturbation components; and the flux averaging length scale, defining the length over which products of perturbations are averaged in order to estimate vertical fluxes. Based on the characteristics of the scale dependence of fluxes, the total flux of ...

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: