Sea Spray Impacts on Tropical Cyclone Olwyn Using a Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean-Wave Model

Large quantities of sea spray droplets are generated at the ocean surface and released into the air under extreme marine weather conditions. Even though sea spray plays an important role in the transfer of heat, moisture, and momentum between the air and ocean surface, its true impact remains uncertain in tropical cyclone (TC) modeling. In this study, we include a novel description of seaspray generation into an atmosphere-ocean-wave coupled model to investigate the impacts of sea spray on the development of TC Olwyn. In comparison to a simulation without sea spray, the errors of wind speed and wave height of the modeled TC Olwyn are considerably reduced when sea spray is considered. This improvement is expected to be from the impacts of sea spray on the structure of the TC Olwyn. As sea spray has significant effects on the atmospheric and oceanic environments, our results suggest that sea spray generations need to be included in current TC forecasting models.

Recommended citation: Xu, X., Voermans, J. J., Moon, I.-J., Liu, Q., Guan, C., & Babanin, A. V. (2022). Sea spray impacts on Tropical Cyclone Olwyn using a coupled atmosphere-ocean-wave model. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 127, e2022JC018557. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JC018557 https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JC018557