Influence of air-sea fluxes and breaking waves on oceanic mixed layer

摘要

Mellor-Yamada model is applied to investigate the influence of bulk algorithms for turbulent fluxes on mixed layer depth (MLD). When bulk algorithms independent of wind waves are used to calculate air-sea turbulent fluxes, it is shown that the differences in MLD are mainly resulted by the disparities of heat fluxes by various algorithms. When momentum flux algorithms including the effect of wind waves are applied, it is found that the wave state significantly affects MLD. It is also shown that the turbulence induced by breaking wave has little effect on MLD deepening despite it is very strong near the air-sea interface.