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Nordeng 1991
Nordeng, T.E. (1991). On the wave age dependent drag coefficient and roughness length at sea. Journal of Geophysical Research 96: doi: 10.1029/90JC02649. issn: 0148-0227.

The wave age dependent drag coefficient and roughness length at sea have been studied theoretically by using the simple Phillips spectrum with a wave age dependent Phillips coefficients. It is shown that the turbulent surface stress, which is computed in a reference frame moving with the surface waves according to Kitagigorodskii's ideas, leads to a wave dependent Charnock constant in the range 0.010 to 0.022. The wave-induced stress is computed by using well-established empirical functional of wave growth and assuming that there is a cutoff frequency above which the atmospheric momentum goes to the turbulent stress only. This leads to a total surface stress depending on wave age such that the drag coefficient has a maximum for intermediate wave age numbers (~10). The total surface stress (turbulent and wave induced) is used to compute an effecitve Charnock constant, which is found to vary from 0.012 to 0.085. The results are compared with published observations.

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Abstract

Keywords
Oceanography, Physical, Air-sea interactions, Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics, Ocean-atmosphere interactions, Oceanography, General, Analytical modeling, Oceanography, Physical, Surface waves and tides
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research
http://www.agu.org/journals/jb/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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