The 13th Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence

5B.8
BEHAVIOR OF CHARNOCK'S RELATIONSHIP FOR HIGH WIND CONDITIONS

Jeffrey E. Hare, CIRES/Univ. of Colorado and NOAA/ERL/ETL, Boulder, CO; and P. O. G. Persson, C. W. Fairall, and J. B. Edson

During the last decade, a number of field programs have been conducted over the ocean using improved sensors and platform motion-correction techniques to more accurately obtain measurements of the turbulent fluxes of momentum, sensible, and latent heat in a variety of environments. One result of these campaigns is the significant improvement in the accuracy of air-sea flux bulk algorithms, which relate the surface fluxes to the mean wind, air temperature and humidity, and sea surface temperature. The accuracy of the bulk algorithms is crucial for proper implementation in operational weather forecast and climate models. However, the great majority of measurements which have contributed to the improvement of the bulk algorithms were obtained at wind speeds less than 12 m/s. Furthermore, the air-sea fluxes within high wind events are critical in the formation of severe weather and surface gravity waves. It is essential that the air-sea flux parameterizations be improved for the range of wind speeds from 10 to 30 m/s. One key ingredient within the bulk model is the Charnock relationship which is required to describe the surface roughness and relate the mean wind speed to the surface wind stress. It has long been realized that Charnock's relation underestimates the sea surface roughness at high wind speeds, and there is some evidence that the Charnock constant may increase as the wind speed exceeds 10 m/s. Our current research efforts are focused on improving the air-sea bulk flux parameterizations by investigating the behavior of the Charnock constant for high wind speeds, primarily using turbulent flux data obtained during the recent FASTEX measurement campaign with supplemental data from the COPE, MBL, and GASEX experiments. We will report on the methods used to obtain and process the data sets, and we will present our preliminary findings to the conference.

The 13th Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence