Influence of Wind Waves on Air-Sea Gas Transfer

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bernd Jähne
• Subject Area: Oceanography
• Term: from 2012 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 229459745

Even though significant attention has been dedicated to the investigation of the dependence of air-sea gas exchange on environmental forcing, empirical relations of gas transfer velocities with wind speed are still widely used. Experimental data clearly proves this to be insufficient, but physically more relevant parameters, especially of the wind-wave field, often times could not be measured in experiments. A novel optical instrument for the measurement of waves has been developed, which allows us to measure wave field parameters at the same footprint as gas exchange by active thermography for the first time. We will add measurements of important missing parameters for gas exchange -- statistics of the wave field and micro-meteorology -- to the SOLAS-Peru (M91) cruise on FS Meteor in December 2012 with the goal to replace currently used empirical gas exchange / wind speed relations with a physically-based parametrization.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants