Introduction to Air-Sea Interactions

Introduction to air-sea interactions

Marcel du Plessis

2025-05-28

Welcome

These notes on air-sea interactions were created for the Masters in Marine Science OC4920 course “Observing the ocean from micro to macro scale” at the University of Gothenburg. The site is hosted on GitHub Pages and has been created relatively recently, so if you find a lack of clarity or other errors, please create an GitHub issue here.

I acknowledge that my learning of air-sea interactions is thanks to the time and efforts of many of my teachers and colleagues. In many ways, the content of this site is thanks to them.

I would also like to add that while air-sea interactions represent the exchange of a wide range of properties across the air-sea interface, the notes presented here focus almost exclusively on the air-sea exchange of heat and momentum.

We start the notes with the Earth’s energy distribution, which is fundamentally influenced by the ocean motion and the exchange of energy between the ocean and atmosphere. The ocean stores and transports vast amounts of heat ariund the globe, with air-sea fluxes governing how this heat is exchanged between the ocean and atmosphere. Our ability to understand and predict this exchange is central to weather patterns, climate systems, and the global energy balance.

For instance, these exchanges influence floods, droughts, storm intensity, and storm tracks. Predicting these phenomena is vital for protecting people, property, and natural resources from extreme weather events and the impacts of climate variability and change. This is particularly relevant for predictions beyond the traditional 1–10 day range, extending to sub-seasonal, seasonal, and even decadal timescales. Achieving this requires a strong understanding of the physical processes governing air-sea interactions and the factors that drive their variability.

Additional resources

These notes are created to be stand-alone for the air-sea interactions module of the OC4920 course. You will find it beneficial to do your own reading around the subject to extend your knowledge beyond what is presented here. There are a number of reading material that you will find helpful, some of which I have listed in the references.

Learning objectives

Reading list

These notes were compiled from several readings. You can find the references here.

License

This work is licensed under a GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0).