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What Controls Air-Sea Gas Exchange at Extreme Wind Speeds? Evidence from Laboratory Experiments

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Recent Advances in the Study of Oceanic Whitecaps

Abstract

In 1983 Ed Monahan presented the paper “The role of oceanic whitecaps in air-sea gas exchange” at the first International Symposium on Gas Transfer at Water Surfaces. He predicted a steep increase in the gas transfer velocities once the whitecaps can act as low impedance vents. He also postulated that the main role of bubbles is not their additional surface for exchange but that bubbles act as “stirring devices”. In 1983 no suitable experimental data was available to test this simple but keen and visionary idea. Now more than 30 years later laboratory measurements in high wind speed facilities show that a new regime is established at wind speeds beyond 35 m/s, in which the gas transfer increases very steeply with wind speed. This steep increase is independent of the additional flux across bubble surfaces, because it was also observed for gases with moderate solubility including DMS. In fresh water bubble-induced gas transfer is not dominant even at hurricane wind speeds. For low solubility gases such as SF6 and He, an enhancement of at most 25% was found. In sea water transfer across bubble surfaces contributes at most 2/3 of the flux.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank all members of his research group at Heidelberg University who participated in the realization of the laboratory experiments or the evaluation of the data: Kerstin Krall, Sonja Friman, Angelika Klein, Leonie Flothow, Maximilian Bopp, and Wolfgang Mischler. He is equally grateful for the help of all cooperation partners, who made the measurements at the facilities in Kyoto, Marseille, and Miami facilities possible, among others Satoru Komori from Kyoto University, Brian Haus from RSMAS, Miami, Guillemette Caulliez from MIO, Marseille and Yuliya Troitskaya from the Applied Physics Institute in Nizhny Novgorod. Partial financial support for this research by the German Science Foundation (DFG), projects JA395/17-1 and JA395/17-2 “Air-Sea Gas Exchange at High Wind Speeds” is gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. HCI and IWR at Institute of Environmental Physics, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Bernd Jähne

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, Groton, CT, USA

    Penny Vlahos

  2. Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, Groton, CT, USA

    Edward C. Monahan

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Jähne, B. (2020). What Controls Air-Sea Gas Exchange at Extreme Wind Speeds? Evidence from Laboratory Experiments. 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_10

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