The structure and formation mechanism of a sea fog event over the Yellow Sea

In this paper, a heavy sea fog event occurring over the Yellow Sea on 11 April 2004 was investigated based upon observational and modeling analyses. From the observational analyses, this sea fog event is a typical advection cooling case. Sea surface temperature (SST) and specific humidity (SH) show strong gradients from south to north, in which warm water is located in the south and consequently, moisture is larger in the south than in the north due to evaporation processes. After fog formation, evaporation process provides more moisture into the air and further contributes to fog evolution. The sea fog event was reproduced by the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) reasonably. The roles of important physical processes such as radiation, turbulence as well as atmospheric stratification in sea fog’s structure and its formation mechanisms were analyzed using the model results. The roles of long wave radiation cooling, turbulence as well as atmospheric stratification were analyzed based on the modeling results. It is found that the long wave radiative cooling at the fog top plays an important role in cooling down the fog layer through turbulence mixing. The fog top cooling can overpower warming from the surface. Sea fog develops upward with the aid of turbulence. The buoyancy term, i.e., the unstable layer, contributes to the generation of TKE in the fog region. However, the temperature inversion layer prevents fog from growing upward.