Air-sea interaction in the Arctic Ocean from measurements in the summer-autumn period

Abstract

One of the main issues of the problem of the air-sea interaction is the description of energy and mass transfer processes. In the most complex form, its processes are presented in the Arctic basin, since the ice cover determines the albedo change, heat and moisture fluxes, as well as the dynamic interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere. The paper presents the results of experimental studies of the turbulent air-sea interaction in the summer and autumn in the central and shelf zones of the Arctic Ocean. A comparison of ship observations with reanalysis and mesoscale modeling data shows that reanalyses poorly reproduce turbulent flows in the northern polar region, especially in the autumn period. This is due to both the insufficient development of the parameterizations for determining the exchange coefficients in the algorithms for calculating turbulent flows, and the difficulty in determining the temperature of the surface covered with ice of various concentrations.

Keywords

• air-sea interaction
• turbulent heat fluxes
• sea ice
• reanalysis