Parameterization of sea surface drag under varying sea state and its dependence on wave age

Momentum and energy exchange at air–sea interface through wind stress is very important for air–sea interaction studies, ocean modeling, and climate studies. The accurate representation of wind stress, in terms of drag coefficient, is a key factor in estimating the momentum transfer at the interface. The drag coefficient, in general, estimated using bulk formulae does not take into account the influence of wave age. This study examines the dependence of wave age on computed surface drag coefficient obtained by combining the Toba 3/2-power law with Froude number scaling, resulting in a new drag formulation (hereafter referred as RP formulation). We demonstrate that our proposed formulation is in good conjunction with established theories for both young and mature waves. Our investigation shows the theoretical formulation advocated earlier by Guan and Xie (hereafter referred as GX) overestimated the surface drag for mature waves as wind speed tends to increase. In addition, the formulation by GX was not verified by observational data. In the present work, for validation purpose, we use time series measurement of meteorological and oceanographic data from a deep water location in the Indian Ocean which was tested with both RP and GX formulations. We find that the proposed RP formulation, which embeds the 3/2 power of wave-age, shows a better match for both young and mature waves with the results of Janssen compared to the hypothesis of conventional wave age used by GX. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009