Ocean bubbles under high wind conditions – Part 1:  Bubble distribution and development

Czerski, Helen; Brooks, Ian M.; Gunn, Steve; Pascal, Robin; Matei, Adrian; Blomquist, Byron

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-18-565-2022

Articles | Volume 18, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-18-565-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-18-565-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 3

Research article

|

03 May 2022

Research article |

| 03 May 2022

Ocean bubbles under high wind conditions – Part 1: Bubble distribution and development

Helen Czerski, Ian M. Brooks, Steve Gunn, Robin Pascal, Adrian Matei, and Byron Blomquist

Data sets

Near-surface bubble size distributions and sonar data in the North Atlantic H. Czerski, I. Brooks, S. R. Gunn, A. Matei, and R. Al-Lashi https://doi.org/10.5285/c972e316-2b93-1b4e-e053-6c86abc02285

1D and 2D wave spectra and statistics in the North Atlantic I. Brooks https://doi.org/10.5285/c9ae04d6-32d2-73f1-e053-6c86abc0c833

HiWinGS expedition (North Atlantic, October - November 2013) 10 minute meteorological data H. Czerski and B. W. Blomquist https://doi.org/10.5285/dd2837f0-b721-7b13-e053-6c86abc0cee7

Short summary

The bubbles formed by breaking waves speed up the movement of gases like carbon dioxide and oxygen between the atmosphere and the ocean. Understanding where these gases go is an important part of understanding Earth's climate. In this paper we describe measurements of the bubbles close to the ocean surface during big storms in the North Atlantic. We observed small bubbles collecting in distinctive patterns which help us to understand the contribution they make to the ocean breathing.