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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ESSDD</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>Earth System Science Data Discussions</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ESSDD</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">1866-3591</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name></publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/essd-2026-476</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>A Spray-Mediated Surface Turbulent Heat Flux Dataset for the Southern Ocean</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yi</surname>
<given-names>An</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0009-8799-7408</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Liu</surname>
<given-names>Jiping</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Renfrew</surname>
<given-names>Ian</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yang</surname>
<given-names>Chaoyuan</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8015-5234</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Dong</surname>
<given-names>Changming</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Song</surname>
<given-names>Xiangzhou</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yang</surname>
<given-names>Qinghua</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7114-2036</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University and Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong  Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai, 519082, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>School of Marine Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Key Laboratory of Marine Hazards Forecasting, Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), Hohai University, Nanjing, 210024, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>31</day>
<month>08</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>24</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 An Yi et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-476/">This article is available from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-476/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-476/essd-2026-476.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-476/essd-2026-476.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>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&lt;sup&gt;-2&lt;/sup&gt;, with large fluxes in the circumpolar region (50&amp;deg; S&amp;ndash;60&amp;deg; 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&amp;rsquo;s role in the global energy budget.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="24"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Key Research and Development Program of China</funding-source>
<award-id>2024YFF0506600</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai)</funding-source>
<award-id>SML2024SP023</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
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