EGU2020-14780
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-14780
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Two-sided turbulent boundary layer parameterizations for assessing ocean – atmosphere fluxes

Florian Lemarie1, Charles Pelletier1,2, Pierre-Etienne Brilouet3, Eric Blayo1, Jean-Luc Redelsperger3, and Marie-Noëlle Bouin4
Florian Lemarie et al.
  • 1Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Inria, CNRS, Grenoble INP, LJK, Grenoble, France
  • 2Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate Research, Earth and Life Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
  • 3Univ. Brest, CNRS, IRD, Ifremer, Laboratoire d’Océanographie Physique et Spatiale (LOPS), IUEM, Brest, France
  • 4Météo‐France/CNRM, Plouzané, France

Standard methods for determining air – sea fluxes typically rely on bulk algorithms derived from the Monin-Obukhov stability theory (MOST), using ocean surface fields and atmosphere near-surface fields. In the context of coupled ocean – atmosphere simulations, the shallowest ocean vertical level is usually assimilated to the surface, and the turbulent closure is one-sided: it aims at extrapolating atmosphere near-surface solution profiles (for wind speed, temperature and humidity) to the prescribed ocean surface values. Assimilating near-surface ocean fields as surface ones is equivalent to considering that in the ocean surface layer, solution profiles are constant instead of also being determined by a turbulent closure. Here we introduce a method for extending existing turbulent parameterizations to a two-sided context, by including the ocean surface layer and the viscous sublayers, which are also generally neglected in standard air – sea fluxes computation. The formalism we use for this method is derived from that of classical turbulent closure, so that our novelties can easily be implemented within existing formulations. Special care is taken to ensure the smoothness of resulting solution profiles. We investigate the impact of such two-sided bulk formulations on air - sea fluxes and discuss further implications such as resulting bulk formulation retuning. We also present leads on incorporating other mechanisms impacting air – sea fluxes within our framework, such as waves and radiation penetration.

How to cite: Lemarie, F., Pelletier, C., Brilouet, P.-E., Blayo, E., Redelsperger, J.-L., and Bouin, M.-N.: Two-sided turbulent boundary layer parameterizations for assessing ocean – atmosphere fluxes, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-14780, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-14780, 2020.

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