852 JOURNAL OF THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES Vou. 52, No.7 ‘The Temperature of Evaporating Sea Spray Droplets: Epcar L ANDREAS US. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, New Hampshire (Manuscript eceived 14 September 1993, in final form 27 July 1994) ABSTRACT Evaporating sea sprey droplets are often assumed to be at the temperature of a well-ventilated wet-balb ‘thermometer, Tay. Although this assumption may be accurate enough in practice, it is incorrect on theoretical ‘grounds. Spray droplets have curved surfaces, they contain dissolved salts, and they may be small enough that the air and water vapor surrounding them do not behave as continuous fluids. Each ofthese characteristic of ‘aqueous solution droplets can potentially affect vapor exchange ata droplets surface and, thu, its temperature; ‘bat the wet-bulb temperature accounts for nove ofthese. This paper uses a fll microphysical model to accurately predict the evaporating temperature, Tx, of pure and saline droplets to investigate how close Tx i t0 this In general, Tu is within 02°~0.3°C of Te for droplets with salinities from 0 to 40 psu when the Tar Tou = Tor (a7) ‘That is, the droplet evaporating temperature can be no higher than the air temperature When 7, is above about 5°C, Tau is no longer near ‘enough to T., to be a useful approximation in the py term in (4.16). Thus, for temperatures above 5°C and for droplets smaller than 4 jm, T estimate 7, in (4.16) with T= Ton Ta= Ta | toasty Tear, Toy RH, 8) = T, In(r/0.1). (4.18) (This yields Ty in °C when Tye and T, are in °C and when ris in pm.) This relation simply acknowledges that, in Fig. 2, Ty is fairly close to the straight line that connects (0.1 ui, 7,) and (10 jm, Tx) on this semi- logarithmic plot When 4 = r <8 um, I simply use 7, from (4.18) as the estimator of Ty, and forgo (4.16) altogether. For 7, > 5°C and for r = 8 um, T use an entirely 5°C and = 8 ym, the spread in T., for relative humidities be- (4.20) JOURNAL OF THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES Vou. $2, No.7 tween 80% and 97.5% when $ modeled by a finear function of air temperature: ATyu = 0.0554(T, — 10) + 1.497, (4.21) Again, ATy is in °C when T, is in °C. Thus, if I had an estimate of T., at zero salinity and 97.5% relative humidity, I could estimate T,, at zero salinity for any relative humidity between 80% and 97.5% from Tear, T,, RH, S = 0) = Teu(r, Ts, RH = 97.5, $ = 0) + ATuul(f — 0.975)/0.175}, 0 psu (AT) is well (422) where fis the fractional relative humidity. It tums out that Tua is an excellent estimate of To(r, Tay RH = 975, 5 = 0) for r > 8 um (see Fig. 2). Hence, from (4,20) and (4.22), my algorithm for Teg when r > 8 um, T, > 5°C, 80 < RH < 97.5%, and 0S $< 40 psuis Tou (1, Tay RH, $) = [0.317(T, ~ 10) + 8.55) X (f= 0.975) + (0.170(T, ~ 10) + 4.80}s. + Ta(Tay RH = 97.5). (4.23) “AS above, here Tey is in degrees Celsius when T, is in degrees Celsius, when f is the fractional relative hu- midity, and when sis the fractional salinity. Figure 4 summarizes my entire algorithm for esti- mating T,.. Figure 5 shows plots of Tay — Tov, where Toy came from the algorithm and ., came from the full ‘microphysical model. In Fig, 5, the air temperatures are 10°, 20°, and 30°C. Similar plots for air temperatures of 0° and ~10°C are unnecessary because, for these, |Tox ~ Tes| is never larger than 0.14°C. ‘To appreciate the quality of the new algorithm, com- pare Fig. 5 with Fig. 2. Figure 2 shows that Tw, as an estimator of Tay, is sometimes in error by over 1.5°C and is frequently in error by over 1°C for the range of conditions studied. Figure 5 shows that Tuy, on the other hand, is rarely in error by as much as.0.3°C. In fact, an error this large occurs only in the vieinity of rp = 5 um in the T, = 10°C, $ = 40 psu plot. For the vast majority of conditions studied, the error is smaller 02°C. Figure 6 shows Tag — Tey specifically for the sea spray problem— the surface salinity is 34 psu. The ver- tical temperature scale in each of the five panels in Fig, 6 is the same; the figure thus emphasizes how Tu. gets better and better as an estimator of Ta, as the air tem- perature decreases. In effect, as 7, decreases, the pr ~ p, term in (4.1) gets smaller and smaller, and 7, deviates less and less from 7,, ‘Comparing Fig. 3 with Fig. 6 puts in perspective the hypothesis that T,. is a good estimator for the evapo- rating temperature of sea spray droplets. According to Fig. 3, Ta can underestimate Tq, by more than 1.5°C for T, = 30°C and by more than 0.5°C for T, = —10°C.1 Apa. 1995 Figure 6 shows that my algorithm for T,., in contrast, is rarely off by as much as 0.2°C and is virtually exact for all conditions studied when T, is 0°C or less. 5. Discussion ‘The question remains as to why the wet-bulb tem- perature is not even an accurate predictor of the evap- orating temperature of large, pure water droplets, a sit- uation for which it was thought appropriate, Figure 2 shows how far Tyq can be from T,, for these droplets. As Iribarne and Godson (1981, p. 123 ff.) explained, the derivation of (2.1) is based on the assumption that air and liquid water are in equilibrium. Equilibrium ne- cessitates that both air and water are at T.q. Such con- ditions can exist only when there are no net fluxes of sensible or latent heat between the air and the water. For the spray droplet case, in contrast, when the droplet is at Tx, it is at its farthest from 7., as Fig. 1 shows. Clearly, there are still sensible and latent heat fluxes at the droplet surface. Thus, its fundamentally incorrect to use the wet-bulb temperature to predict the evaporating temperature of water droplets—even if they are pure water 6. Conclusions Although the literature contains many examples in which the wet-bulb temperature, Twa, is taken as the evaporating temperature, 7.,, of sea spray droplets, to my knowledge, this is the first detailed examination of that assumption. On theoretical grounds, the assump- tion cannot be true. The wet-bulb temperature takes no account of the surface curvature of the droplets, the solutes that they contain, or that, because of their small size, the air and water vapor around them may no longer behave as continuous fluids. Each of these three effects can influence the vapor exchange at the surface of a small solution droplet and, thereby, invalidate the assumption that its temperature is Twa. In practice, I find, however, that the surface curvature effects are negligible for the relevant size range of sea spray drop- lets. The solute and noncontinuum effects can also be negligibly small for some spray conditions but, in gen- eral, remain to assure that many spray droplets have an evaporating temperature different from Tv More specifically, my results suggest that for sea spray droplets of radius 10 jum and larger, Tw. may be an adequate estimator of 7., for some purposes. When ry = 10 jm, Taq is within 0.2°-0.3°C of To. for most conditions in which spray occurs. Thus, for example, in studies of the sensible heat carried by sea spray, Toa may be accurate enough as a droplet temperature if the air—sea temperature difference is at least 2°-3°C, since the larger droplets carry the vast majority of the spray sensible heat (Andreas 1992). But if the air—sea tem- perature difference is small, assuming that Te. = Ta ‘would produce a significant relative error in the esti ANDREAS 861 ince that Toe (Po mated sensible heat flux carried by the spray, relative error would go basically as |(Toy ~ -1,)| For small spray droplets—ones with radii less than 10 pm—Tye is generally not an adequate estimate of Tx. These Small droplets play a significant role in the latent heat exchanged by sea spray (Andreas 1992). In turn, the rate of their latent heat exchange depends cru- cially on droplet temperature, Correctly estimating the Tatent heat exchanged by sea spray will probably re- quire a more accurate droplet temperature than To. To address these needs for better estimates of droplet evaporating temperatures, I have developed an algo- rithm based on the full microphysical equation for the evaporating temperature of an aqueous solution droplet and on insights from computations using it. Figure 4 summarizes this algorithm. ‘Temperatures that the algorithm produces (Tex) are within 0.3°C of T., for all droplets with radii from 0.5 to 500 jam when ‘air temperatures are —10° to 30°C, ambient relative humidities are 80% to 97.5%, and droplet salinities are 0 to 40 psu. This 0.3°C error oc- curs, however, only for a small range of droplet radii around ry = 5 ym when T, = 10°C and RH = 80%. Far more often, the error is well under 0.2°C. As the air temperature goes down, Tuy gets closer and closer to Tx, until, for air temperatures of O°C or less, the two are Virtually identical. Acknowledgments. [would like to thank J. H. Cragin, ‘A.W. Hogan, and C. J, Ryerson for reviewing the man- uscript. Three anonymous reviewers made helpful sug- gestions for improving the manuscript. 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