Description:

Air-sea interactions and marine boundary layer processes play a vital role in Earth’s weather, climate, and ocean circulation. Traditionally, observations of the atmosphere near the ocean surface are limited to in-situ observations from buoys and field campaigns, as satellite observations have suffered from attenuation of their signals due to precipitation and/or infrequent revisits. This has led to incomplete measurements of the marine boundary layer diurnal cycle and the rapid evolution of boundary layer processes. Recent innovations in retrieval techniques and observing system strategies have provided new tools for understanding and observing air-sea and marine boundary layer processes, often in all weather conditions. These include, but are certainly not limited to: improved passive and active precipitation estimates over the ocean, low frequency (L-band; 19 cm) passive microwave radiometers and GNSS-R-based estimates of surface winds and turbulent heat fluxes, and improved instruments and algorithms for retrieving boundary and surface layer temperature and humidity. These observatories, increasingly launched as a constellation and/or in a non-sun-synchronous orbit, can also provide observations with higher temporal and spatial resolutions. These data allow new investigations of the role air-sea interactions play in the development of tropical and extratropical systems and the oceanic responses and allow for more comprehensive observations of the marine boundary and surface layers. In this session, we bring together researchers who are using novel satellite observations and techniques (such as those from GPM, CYGNSS, COWVR, TEMPEST, TROPICS, and others) to improve our understanding of ocean-atmosphere and marine boundary layer processes and their interactions that contribute to oceanic and atmospheric evolution.