Imbalance Term in the TKE Budget over Waves
In an attempt to reconciliate air-sea momentum flux estimates derived from open sea observations, from large eddy simulation output fields, and from wind-wave tank measurements, a series of dedicated experiments were conducted in the wind-wave tank of the Large Air-Sea Facility of Marseille, France....
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2025-03-01
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| Series: | Atmosphere |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/16/4/412 |
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| Summary: | In an attempt to reconciliate air-sea momentum flux estimates derived from open sea observations, from large eddy simulation output fields, and from wind-wave tank measurements, a series of dedicated experiments were conducted in the wind-wave tank of the Large Air-Sea Facility of Marseille, France. The turbulent friction velocity, upon which the momentum flux depends, was estimated from wind measurements by applying four classical methods including the eddy-covariance method and the inertial-dissipation method. The collected data were used to investigate some characteristics of the wave-influenced boundary layer that were predicted by previous simulations, and to quantify a wave-dependent term of the turbulent kinetic energy equation, the so-called imbalance term <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msub><mi>ϕ</mi><mi>imb</mi></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula>. Our results show that the turbulent stress decreases toward lower heights where the effect of waves is large, as in the simulations, and that <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msub><mi>ϕ</mi><mi>imb</mi></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula> is in the range 0.3 to 0.7, which is comparable to the value found with open sea data (0.4). These preliminary results have to be confirmed with wave-following probes, because the estimated eddy-covariance flux slightly varied with height, thus it could not be strictly considered to be equal to a constant total flux. |
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| ISSN: | 2073-4433 |