Modelling air-sea fluxes during a western Pacific typhoon: Role of sea spray

It has long been recognized that the evolution of marine storms may be strongly affected by the flux transfer processes over the ocean. High winds in a storm can generate large amounts of spray, which can modify the transfer of momentum, heat, and moisture across the air-sea interface. However, the role of sea spray and air-sea processes in western Pacific typhoons has remained elusive. In this study, the impact of sea spray on air-sea fluxes and the evolution of a typhoon over the western Pacific is investigated using a coupled atmosphere-sea-spray modeling system. Through the case study of the recent Typhoon Fengshen from 2002, we found that: (1) Sea spray can cause a significant latent heat flux increase of up to 40% of the interfacial fluxes in the typhoon; (2) Taking into account the effects of sea spray, the intensity of the modeled typhoon can be increased by 30% in the 10-m wind speed, which may greatly improve estimates of storm maximum intensity and, to some extent, improve the simulations of overall storm structure in the atmospheric model; (3) The effects of sea spray are mainly focused over the high wind regions around the storm center and are mainly felt in the lower part of the troposphere.