Air–sea interaction heat and momentum fluxes based on vessel's experimental observations over Spanish waters

Abstract

The ocean and atmosphere communicate directly through air–sea interaction fluxes. These include heat exchange by latent (LHFL) and sensible (SHFL) heat and momentum (MOFL) by wind stress. These stand as the leading predictors of how the ocean influences atmospheric variability and vice versa. In this paper, meteorological and upper-ocean measurements collected during the period of 2011–2023 aboard four research vessels over Spanish waters and adjacent seas are used to study air–sea interaction fluxes. These research vessels are Ramón Margalef (RM), Ángeles Alvariño (AJ), and Cornide de Saavedra (CS) belonging to the Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO-CSIC) and Miguel Oliver (MO) of the Secretaría General de Pesca of Spain. Recorded data are sent daily to the IEO Data Center on land, where quality control procedures are applied. Heat and momentum flux products are derived using the bulk aerodynamic approximation and are stored within a MEDAR/MedAtlas format alongside the meteorological and ocean variables used in the calculation. The data sets generated and described here are publicly available at SEANOE (https://doi.org/10.17882/103856, Sánchez-Lorente and Tel, 2024a; https://doi.org/10.17882/103424, Sánchez-Lorente and Tel, 2024b; https://doi.org/10.17882/103903, Sánchez-Lorente and Tel, 2024c; https://doi.org/10.17882/103855, Sánchez-Lorente and Tel, 2024d). In order to study the behaviour of these air–sea fluxes, several marine-region subdivisions, based on the heterogeneity of the Spanish waters, are proposed. Additionally, some results within the context of these regions are shown.