Luc Deike (Princeton)

Physical processes at the ocean-atmosphere interface have a large effect on climate and weather by controlling the transfer of momentum and mass. In particular, ocean spray aerosols are tiny water droplets and solid particles (from tens of nanometers to hundreds of microns) emitted at the ocean surface by wave breaking and bubble bursting during storms and residing into the atmosphere. Ocean spray aerosols provide a pathway to transfer salt, biological material or microplastics from the ocean into the atmosphere, affecting the climate system through the radiative balance and the formation of clouds.

I will discuss recent efforts in my group towards improving our understanding and modeling of sea spray production through a multi-scale framework. We combine laboratory experiments and numerical simulations on turbulent multiphase flows, including wave breaking, bubble break-up in turbulence and spray production by bubble bursting together with a statistical description of breaking waves. This framework aims to account for the very large range of scales involved in the process, from wave statistics scales of order of km, O(1m-1km), to wave breaking dynamics, O(1-10m), air bubble entrainment, bubble dynamics in turbulence and finally bubble bursting at the free surface, O(microns to mm). Physics based formulation for air-sea gas bubble mediated gas exchange and sea spray emissions can then be proposed.