| 31 Aug 2026
A Spray-Mediated Surface Turbulent Heat Flux Dataset for the Southern Ocean
Abstract. Sea spray generated by wave breaking under high wind speeds strongly influences air-sea turbulent heat exchange. Nowhere is this process more critical than the Southern Ocean where the most extreme wave climate on Earth is located. However, current existing gridded air-sea heat flux datasets lack representation of sea spray-mediated component, which lead to a major problem in assessing and understanding the role of sea spray in the Southern Ocean. Here, we present a new gridded dataset of spray-mediated latent and sensible heat fluxes over the Southern Ocean that incorporates a full sea spray microphysical model, which considers spray generation that depends on regional wind and wave states. Our data allows a quantitative assessment of the spray-mediated contribution to the total air-sea heat flux exchange. Climatologically, spray-mediated heat fluxes range from 0.04 to 39.6 W m-2, with large fluxes in the circumpolar region (50° S–60° S), especially in the Indian sector during austral winter. Validation of an extreme cyclone shows that, within the high wind sector of the cyclone, spray-mediated heat fluxes double the regional fluxes compared to conventional bulk algorithm estimates. This dataset serves a critical foundation for examining the Southern Ocean’s role in the global energy budget.
The authors present a new dataset of spray mediated latent and sensible heat fluxes for the Southern Ocean. The authors combine previously published flux and sea spray generation models to produce a physically-based, droplet-size dependent model, and use it to determine spray mediated fluxes for the Southern Ocean (South of 35S), 1993 – 2022, at monthly, ¼ degree resolution.
Such a dataset would be valuable to the community – the paper itself justifies this need and is in general very well written. I have no specific corrections or suggestions for the paper itself. The dataset and code are provided in a easy-to-use format and their use and access are well described.