Sea spray at extremely high wind speeds: generation mechanisms, contribution to atmosphere–ocean interactions, and role in sea hurricane dynamics

Abstract

The presented research has made progress in describing sea spray and understanding the associated processes in terms of its physical properties, as well as the resulting fluxes from the ocean to the atmosphere, its influence on the development of ocean storms, and related problems and issues. The main results were obtained during laboratory experiments on wind-wave flumes using high-speed photography. Descriptions of studies related to the identification of the dominant type of spray generation (the bag-breakup type) and the statistics of these phenomena in a wide range of conditions depending on the wind-wave Reynolds number characterizing small-scale processes are given. Convolution of this statistics with the droplet size distribution from a single phenomenon of spray generation of the specified type, obtained from data of a special experiment, yields the spray generation function.