Infrared Remote Sensing of Cooling Whitecap Foam to Quantify Wave Breaking and Aeration

红外遥感冷却白浪泡沫以量化波浪破碎和通气

• 批准号: 2048616
• 负责人: Carmine Chickadel
• 金额: $ 53.24万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-03-01 至 2025-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2048616&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Infrared; Remote; Sensing; Cooling; Whitecap

Wave breaking plays a critical role in air-sea interaction processes in both the open ocean and the surf zone. Energy and momentum transferred from the atmosphere to the ocean through wind-wave generation is ultimately dissipated by waves. The resulting turbulence in the upper ocean causes mixing, and in the nearshore momentum transfer can force currents. Improved understanding of the bubble and foam formation processes during wave breaking is needed to better understand the impacts of wave breaking. The goal of this project is to develop and utilize a remote sensing technique to study bubble plume formation and associated wave breaking energy dissipation by exploiting the thermal signature of cooling residual foam left behind by the breaking process. A large-scale, outdoor laboratory experiment will be conducted to evaluate the technique for field-scale breaking waves and explore the effect of wave breaking type, breaking strength, and bubble distribution.The investigators hypothesize that the time from when breaking begins to when the residual foam starts to cool provides a measure of both the bubble plume decay time and depth, which can be used to determine bubble characteristics and evaluate existing plume models related to the wave energy dissipation rate. Prior results indicate that the foam cooling time can be used to map the spatial variability of bubble plume depth and thus provide the spatially varying bubble plume volume. This project will use thermal infrared (IR) imagery and ancillary measurements to investigate and further establish these relationships. The resulting ability to remotely quantify bubble plume properties and energy dissipation due to wave breaking will provide a new and transformative tool for investigating and understanding the air-sea interaction processes driven by wave breaking in the open ocean and the surf zone.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.

海浪破碎在开阔海域和海浪带的海气相互作用过程中起着至关重要的作用。通过风浪发电从大气转移到海洋的能量和动量最终被海浪消散。由此产生的上层海洋的湍流会引起混合，而在近岸的动量转移会迫使洋流。为了更好地理解波浪破碎的影响，需要更好地了解波浪破碎过程中的气泡和泡沫形成过程。该项目的目标是开发和利用一种遥感技术，通过利用破碎过程中留下的冷却残余泡沫的热特征来研究气泡羽流的形成和相关的波浪破碎能量耗散。将进行大规模的室外实验室实验，以评估现场尺度的破碎波技术，并探索波浪破碎类型、破碎强度和气泡分布的影响。研究人员假设，从开始破碎到剩余泡沫开始冷却的时间提供了气泡羽流衰减时间和深度的量度，可用于确定气泡特征和评估现有的与波浪能量耗散率相关的羽流模型。前人的研究结果表明，泡沫冷却时间可以用来描绘气泡羽流深度的空间变异性，从而提供空间变化的气泡羽流体积。该项目将使用热红外(IR)图像和辅助测量来调查和进一步建立这些关系。由此产生的能够远程量化气泡羽流特性和波浪破碎造成的能量耗散的能力，将为研究和理解开放海洋和海浪区由波浪破裂驱动的海-气相互作用过程提供一个新的变革性工具。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。