Sea Spray Impacts on Tropical Cyclone Olwyn Using a Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean-Wave Model

Abstract

Extreme marine weather enhances the production of sea spray droplets which, in turn, affect the air-sea fluxes. Despite the ability of sea spray to modulate air-sea interaction processes, it remains under-represented in tropical cyclone (TC) forecasting modeling. In this study, impacts of sea spray on the atmospheric and oceanic environments of TC Olwyn are investigated. This is achieved by high-resolution nested simulations using an air-sea-wave model coupled with a sea spray production model. We compared two different sea spray models: a wave-Reynolds-number-dependent model, and a wave-steepness-dependent spray model. By including a sea spray model, the root mean square error in the simula..