Numerical investigation on the heat transfer in wind turbulence over breaking waves

Heat transfer in wind turbulence over breaking waves is studied through direct numerical simulations. The air-water system is simulated on an Eulerian grid with the interface between the two phases captured by a coupled level set and volume-of-fluid method. To examine the effect of wave age, different cases representing slow, intermediate, and fast waves are considered for the scenario of air temperature being higher than the water temperature. The results show that the evolution of mean temperature profile responds nonmonotonically to the increasing wave age. At a small wave age, the mean temperature near the water surface increases after wave breaking. At intermediate and large wave ages, however, the temperature decreases after wave breaking, while the decrement magnitude is larger at the intermediate wave age. An investigation of the temperature fluctuation flux indicates that a combined effect of wave-coherent flux and turbulence-induced flux leads to a large magnitude of temperature decrement at the intermediate wave age. A further analysis of the production term in the transport equation of the turbulence-induced temperature flux elucidates the mechanism underlying the generation of the turbulence-induced flux at the intermediate wave age. The findings of the present study suggest that temperature responds in a more complex manner to wave age than velocity does and this phenomenon should be considered in models for air-sea interaction and weather forecasting.