URI GSO Air-Sea Interaction Research Group - Research

Airflow separations over wind waves and their impact on air-sea momentum flux
Laboratory observations and LES are closely combined to study airflow separation events and their impact on air-sea momentum flux. We test hypotheses that airflow separation significantly modifies the wave form drag, the near surface turbulence, and the air-sea momentum flux...
Langmuir Turbulence Under Tropical Cyclones
The program is aimed at understanding Langmuir circulation (LC) under realistic Tropical Cyclone (TC) conditions and at assessing the role of LC on the coupled ocean-wave-atmosphere TC dynamics. We are testing our hypothesis that LC effects will have a significant effect on the three-dimensional TC dynamics...
Effect of breaking waves on air-sea momentum flux
Using large eddy simulations (LES) we have investigated the impact of resolved and sub-grid scale breaking waves on near surface atmospheric turbulence and air-sea momentum flux. We have found that breaking wave form drag may dominate the air-sea flux in strongly forced laboratory conditions...
Air-Sea Momentum Flux in a Coupled Ocean-Wave Model and its Impact on the Ocean Response to a Hurricane
Increased understanding of hurricanes (also known as tropical cyclones) is critical to improving our ability to predict both the storm track and the intensity. Both the sea surface temperature and the upper mixed layer thickness are important to hurricane...
Sea-State Dependent Air-Sea Momentun Exchange Parameterizations in Hurricanes
Under the currently funded JHT and HFIP projects, the URI group is in the process of completing the implementation of explicit wave coupling in the GFDL and HWRF systems, and its near-real time testing will begin in 2014. This model development effort involves improving physical parameterizations of the air-sea heat and...