Air-sea interactions in light of new understanding of air-land interactions

Based on the concept of the hockey-stick transition (HOST) hypothesis, which emphasizes contributions of large coherent eddies in atmospheric turbulent mixing that are not fully captured by Monin-Obukhov similarity theory, relationships between the atmospheric momentum transfer and the sea surface roughness, and the role of the sea surface temperature (SST) and oceanic waves in the turbulent transfer of atmospheric momentum, heat, and moisture, and variations of drag coefficient Cd(z) over sea and land with wind speed V are studied.

In general, the atmospheric turbulence transfers over sea and land are similar except under weak winds and near the sea surface when wave-induced winds and oceanic currents are relevant to wind shear in generating atmospheric turbulence. The transition of the atmospheric momentum transfer between the stable and the near-neutral regimes is different over land and sea owing to the different strength and formation of atmospheric stable stratification.