Ocean Waves Breaking and Marine Aerosol Fluxes

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XVI

   PDF

2. Basic processes near the air—sea interface

   • Stanisław R. Massel

   Pages 1-9

3. Mechanics of steep and breaking waves

   • Stanisław R. Massel

   Pages 11-29

4. Spectral and statistical properties of ocean waves

   • Stanisław R. Massel

   Pages 31-73

5. Experimental insights into mechanisms of wave breaking

   • Stanisław R. Massel

   Pages 75-120

6. Wave breaking criteria and probability of breaking

   • Stanisław R. Massel

   Pages 121-155

7. Energy dissipation due to wave breaking

   • Stanisław R. Massel

   Pages 157-181

8. Whitecap coverage of the sea surface

   • Stanisław R. Massel

   Pages 183-206

9. Fundamentals of marine aerosols

   • Stanisław R. Massel

   Pages 207-228

10. Marine aerosol fluxes

    • Stanisław R. Massel

    Pages 229-246

11. Aerosol flux as a function of sea state parameters

    • Stanisław R. Massel

    Pages 247-260

12. Seasonal dependence of aerosol fluxes in the Baltic Sea

    • Stanisław R. Massel

    Pages 261-270

13. Back Matter

    Pages 271-325

    PDF

The atmosphere and the ocean form a coupled system which exchanges heat, momentum and water at the air–sea interface. The interface is dynamic and masses and energy are continually transferred across the air–sea interface. The energy ?ow from the atmosphere to the ocean generates an aerodynamically rough sea surface. If the energy ?ow is su?ciently intense, at some points the surface waves will lose their stability and eventually break. Breaking is a very localized and non-stationary phenomenon that is a source of vorticity and turbulence. Dissipated energy becomes available for mixing the water layers and for whitecapping of various scales. Whitecapping is a strongly nonlinear process, which involves instability of the surface waves with space and time scales several orders of magnitude smaller than those associated with gravity wave motion. Whitecaps are usually formed at or near the crests of the larger waves and occur in groups with successive crests breaking downwind of one another. Wave breaking is the dominant generator of the ‘primary’ marine aerosol (sea salt) and it is a major factor in the air–sea exchange of gases (including carbon dioxide). Most of the aerosol generated from natural waters is in the form of jet and ?lm drops from the bursting of air bubbles (Monahan and Van Patten, 1989). The enriched aerosols associated with the ejected droplets are very - portant in maintaining a source of salt-laden cloud condensation nuclei as well asinterfacial?uxesoftraceconstituents,includingbacteria,viruses,heavym- als, radioactivity and organic material (Kerman, 1986).

• Aerosol
• Dissipation
• Ocean
• Scale
• Wind
• Wind speed
• marine
• remote sensing
• air pollution and air quality
• remote sensing/photogrammetry

From the reviews:

"Massel’s new book describes how to model wave breaking and continues on to show how to use breaking wave models to estimate the production rate of the sea-salt aerosol at the ocean’s surface. … I like the production quality of this book. It has a comfortable size, pleasing font style and size, and sufficient white space to make for easy reading or scanning. The many figures are uniformly styled and formatted … . valuable reference text for researchers studying air–sea interaction and marine aerosols." (Edgar L Andreas, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, March, 2009)

• Institute of Oceanology of the Polish, Academy of Sciences, Sopot, Poland

  Stanisław R. Massel

Stanislaw Massel is currently a professor and the Director of the Institute of Oceanology in Sopot Poland.

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