Abstract
Using an aggregate of 17 whitecap data sets collected over the past 50 years, it has been possible to confirm that the exponent, n, in the traditional simple power-law expression used to express the dependence of whitecap coverage, WB, on 10 m-elevation wind speed, U10, increases significantly as the sea surface temperature (SST) increases. Via several statistical approaches, it has been demonstrated that the stability of the lower marine atmosphere, represented by SST- TA, has a significant influence on the WB(U10) power-law. Previous analyses using only the 12 whitecap data sets that included the geographical co-ordinates where each observation was made, did not confirm a statistically significant dependence of n on latitude. While this study benefited from the size of the whitecap data set available, future studies can achieve even more significant conclusions with more extensive whitecap data sets, that, in addition to WB and U10 values, include the geographical coordinates, and TA and SST values, associated with each whitecap observation.
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Acknowledgments
GH is partially supported by National Science Foundation grants DMS-1712554 and DEB-1353039. SEB is supported by a postdoctoral grant by Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES). CJZ was supported by the National Science Foundation (Grants OCE-0647667, OCE-1537890, and OCE-1756839) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Grant NA07OAR4310094). ECM’s recent research has been supported by the National Science Foundation via awards AGS-1356541 and NSF-1630846. ECM would like to acknowledge the generosity of the late Roman S. Bortkovskii in providing typed listings of the 8 Russian whitecap data sets listed in Table 4.1.
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Hooker, G., Brumer, S.E., Zappa, C.J., Monahan, E.C. (2020). Inferences to Be Drawn from a Consideration of Power-Law Descriptions of Multiple Data Sets Each Comprised of Whitecap Coverage, WB, and 10-m Elevation Wind Speed Measurements (U10). In: Vlahos, P., Monahan, E. (eds) Recent Advances in the Study of Oceanic Whitecaps. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36371-0_4
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