The Signature of Sea Spray in the Hexos Turbulent Heat Flux Data

The role of sea spray intransferring heat and moisture across the air-sea interface has remained elusive. Some studies have reported that sea spray does not affect the turbulent air-sea heat fluxes for 10-m wind speeds up to at least 25 m s^-1, while others have reported important spray contributions for wind speeds as low as 12 m s^-1. One goal of the HEXOS (Humidity Exchange over the Sea) program was to quantify spray's contribution to the turbulent air-sea heat fluxes, but original analyses of the HEXOS flux data found the spray signal to be too small to be reliably identified amid the scatter in the data. We look at the HEXOS data again in the context of the TOGA-COARE bulk flux algorithm and a sophisticated microphysical spray model. This combination of quality data andstate-of-the-art modelling reveals a distinct spray signature in virtually all HEXOS turbulent heat flux data collected in winds of 15 m s^-1 and higher. Spray effects are most evident in the latent heat flux data, where spray contributes roughly 10% of the total turbulent flux in winds of 10 m s^-1 and between 10 and 40% in winds of 15–18 m s^-1. The spray contribution to the total sensible heat flux is also at least 10% in winds above 15 m s^-1. These results lead to a new, unified parameterization for the turbulent air-sea heat fluxes that should be especially useful in high winds because it acknowledges both the interfacial and spray routes by which the sea exchanges heat and moisture with the atmosphere.