Ocean Gravity-Capillary Waves: Dependence on Sea-Surface Processes and Microlayer Properties

对10厘米和更短的波（称为“重力毛细”和“毛细”波）的理解不足，仍然是现代波模型的弱点。充分描述这些波浪及其对风强迫的响应对于了解动量、热量和气体如何在大气和海洋之间传递至关重要。人们早就知道，海洋表面的表面活性剂可以抑制这种波浪，但在真实的海洋中直接观察到这种效果仍然非常罕见。雨冲击海洋表面的物理过程也会影响表面重力-毛细波，尽管在真实的海洋中对这种相互作用的观测还不存在。该项目是分析利用最先进的观测系统在海上收集的未充分利用的数据集，描述海面的短波特性，并纳入海面微层化学特性。这些数据将有助于更好地描述重力毛细波及其在各种环境条件下介导的海气通量，并有助于改进现有模型。这些数据的结果将用于通过Earth 2Class（E2 C）教育工作者研讨会创建激励性的教学材料，这是一个针对教师的专业发展计划，覆盖了来自代表性不足群体的大量学生的学区。研讨会的成果将通过E2 C网站分享，团队成员还将为非课堂观众提供公开讲座。由于使用传统技术难以观察，这些波在真实的海洋中的整体测量非常小。这导致了重力毛细波对大气强迫、海洋表面化学变化和降雨等破坏性物理过程的响应描述的缺乏。将使用的新数据集包括对细尺度风浪特征的观测，同时测量海面微层的化学和生物特性。这项研究将测试三个假设集中在短尺度海浪，它们如何增长，由于风力，它们是如何被表面活性剂衰减，以及它们是如何受到雨水的影响。这项工作将大大扩展我们的短海浪特性的理解，产生一个丰富的重力毛细波观测基础，这将是非常宝贵的未来波建模工作。将SSML的化学和生物学特性纳入这项分析将产生第一个研究重力毛细海洋波对表面化学和SSML微生物组变化的尺度依赖性反应。雨对这些短波的影响的分析将提供进一步深入了解物理过程的机械描述都在文献中，越来越多地发现是重要的物理海气interaction.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Poor understanding of ten centimeter and shorter waves, termed 'gravity-capillary' and 'capillary' waves, remains a point of weakness in modern wave models. Adequate characterization of these waves and their response to wind forcing is essential to understand how momentum, heat and gases are transferred between the atmosphere and ocean. The presence of surfactants on the ocean surface has long been understood to damp such waves, but direct observations of this effect in the real ocean remain exceedingly rare. The physical process of rain impacting the ocean surface also affects surface gravity-capillary waves, though observations of this interaction in the real ocean do not yet exist. This project is to analyze an underutilized data set collected at sea with state-of-the-art observational systems, describing short wave properties of the sea surface, and incorporating sea surface microlayer chemical properties. These data will allow a better description of gravity-capillary waves and the air-sea fluxes they mediate over a variety of environmental conditions, and help improve existing models. The results from the data will be used to create stimulating teaching materials through the Earth2Class (E2C) Workshops for Educators, a professional development program for teachers which reaches school districts with large numbers of students from underrepresented groups. Workshop results will be shared through the E2C website, and team members will also present public lectures to reach a non-classroom audience.The overall body of measurements of these waves in the real ocean is quite small, owing to the difficulty in observing them using traditional techniques. This has led to a paucity of descriptions of gravity-capillary wave response to atmospheric forcing, changes in sea surface chemistry, and disruptive physical processes such as rain. The novel dataset to be utilized included observations of fine-scale wind wave characteristics made simultaneously with measurements of sea surface microlayer (SSML) chemical and biological properties. This study will test three hypotheses focused on short-scale ocean waves, how they grow due to wind forcing, how they are attenuated by surfactants, and the ways in which they are impacted by rain. This work will greatly expand our understanding of short ocean waves characteristics, producing a rich base of gravity-capillary wave observations which will be invaluable to future wave modeling efforts. Incorporation of the SSML chemical and biological properties into this analysis will produce a first-of-its-kind study of the scale-dependent response of gravity-capillary ocean waves to changes in surface chemistry and the SSML microbiome. Analyses of the impact of rain on these short waves will provide further insight into physical processes whose mechanistic descriptions are both underrepresented in the literature and increasingly found to be of importance to physical air-sea interaction.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.