Fatima-GB: Searching Clarity within Marine Fog

Abstract Fog constitutes a thick, opaque blanket of air hugging Earth’s surface, laden with small water droplets or ice crystals. Fog disrupts transportation, poses security threats, disorients human perception, and impacts communications and ecosystems. Collusion of atmospheric, terrestrial, and hydrologic processes produces fog droplets that pullulate over hygroscopic aerosols that act as condensation nuclei. Marine fog is particularly complex, since underlying dynamic, thermodynamic, and (bio)physicochemical processes span fifteen decades of spatial scales, from megameter-sized synoptic weather systems to nanometer-scale bioaerosols. This paper overviews the first international field campaign [Fog and Turbulence Interactions in the Marine Atmosphere-Grand Banks campaign (Fatima-GB)] of the project dubbed Fatima conducted during 1–31 July 2022 in the Grand Banks region of the North Atlantic. Therein, weather systems and commingling cold and warm oceanic waters provide entrée for fog genesis. Measurement platforms included an islet southwest of Nova Scotia (Sable Island), a research vessel ( Atlantic Condor ), an offshore oil platform, and autonomous surface vehicles. The instrument array comprised of extant remote and in situ sensors augmented by novel sensing systems prototyped and deployed in marine fog to penetrate the smallest scales of turbulence, examine aerosols, and quantify radiation budget. The comprehensive dataset so gathered, together with satellite and reanalysis products, mesoscale model, and large-eddy simulations, demonstrated that the long-held hypotheses of marine fog formation by warm air advection over colder water and in areas of enhanced (shelf) turbulence need to be revisited. The study also elicited new phenomena, for example, the fog shadow (clearings of fog downstream of islands). Significance Statement Fog research has escalated recently per climate change implications and directed energy (electromagnetic systems) applications. Here, we report selected findings of Fatima-GB, a comprehensive multidisciplinary field campaign conducted in Grand Banks, one of the world’s foggiest areas, for improving the understanding and predictability of marine fog. Our findings indicate historical understanding of marine fog life cycle requires a fundamental rethink to incorporate complexities of scale interactions. Fog covers 15 decades of spatial scales, wherein megameter-scale synoptic systems sway millimeter-scale turbulent eddies, within which micron-scale fog droplets spawn on either tens (bioaerosols) or hundreds (sea salt) of nanometer-sized marine aerosols. We demonstrate the collusion of meteorological, oceanographic, turbulence, thermodynamic, and (bio)physicochemical processes during marine fog evolution, which should help develop future subgrid parameterizations for numerical weather prediction (NWP) models.

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Publication Details

Journal
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Published
2025-02-12
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1175/bams-d-23-0050.1
Citations
5
Primary Topic
Child Nutrition and Water Access
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
5.60

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article

Fatima-GB: Searching Clarity within Marine Fog

William Perrie, Peter A. Taylor, Martin W. Gallagher, Luke Vincent Colosi et al.
5 citations
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Child Nutrition and Water Access
5.60
article

Fatima-GB: Searching Clarity within Marine Fog

William Perrie, Peter A. Taylor, Martin W. Gallagher, Luke Vincent Colosi, Reneta Dimitrova, S. Wang, Nicholas J. Gapp, Sirio Fiorino, K. D. Keefer, Nicholas M. Statom, Laurent Grare, S. Gaberšek, Alexander W. Dowling, Ian Crawford, Daniel P. Eleuterio, Sebastian W. Hoch, O. Hyde, Z. Chen, Eric R. Pardyjak, Rachel Chang, Harindra J. S. Fernando, C. M. Hocut, Ryuhei YAMAGUCHI, Alexei Perelet, Leyla Salehpoor, Stef L. Bardoel, Ronald Scott Coppersmith, Clive E. Dorman, Jesus Ruiz‐Plancarte, Akhilesh Barve, Andrey A. Grachev, David H. Richter, T. Bullock, G. Giacosa, Trevor C. VandenBoer, Luc Lenain, David G. Ortiz‐Suslow, E. Creegan, Leigh R. Crilley, Byron Blomquist, Ismail Gültepe, Thomas J. Hintz, Qing Wang, L. Shen, Dhiraj Kumar Singh, K. Y. Huang
article en
5 citations

Abstract

Abstract Fog constitutes a thick, opaque blanket of air hugging Earth’s surface, laden with small water droplets or ice crystals. Fog disrupts transportation, poses security threats, disorients human perception, and impacts communications and ecosystems. Collusion of atmospheric, terrestrial, and hydrologic processes produces fog droplets that pullulate over hygroscopic aerosols that act as condensation nuclei. Marine fog is particularly complex, since underlying dynamic, thermodynamic, and (bio)physicochemical processes span fifteen decades of spatial scales, from megameter-sized synoptic weather systems to nanometer-scale bioaerosols. This paper overviews the first international field campaign [Fog and Turbulence Interactions in the Marine Atmosphere-Grand Banks campaign (Fatima-GB)] of the project dubbed Fatima conducted during 1–31 July 2022 in the Grand Banks region of the North Atlantic. Therein, weather systems and commingling cold and warm oceanic waters provide entrée for fog genesis. Measurement platforms included an islet southwest of Nova Scotia (Sable Island), a research vessel ( Atlantic Condor ), an offshore oil platform, and autonomous surface vehicles. The instrument array comprised of extant remote and in situ sensors augmented by novel sensing systems prototyped and deployed in marine fog to penetrate the smallest scales of turbulence, examine aerosols, and quantify radiation budget. The comprehensive dataset so gathered, together with satellite and reanalysis products, mesoscale model, and large-eddy simulations, demonstrated that the long-held hypotheses of marine fog formation by warm air advection over colder water and in areas of enhanced (shelf) turbulence need to be revisited. The study also elicited new phenomena, for example, the fog shadow (clearings of fog downstream of islands). Significance Statement Fog research has escalated recently per climate change implications and directed energy (electromagnetic systems) applications. Here, we report selected findings of Fatima-GB, a comprehensive multidisciplinary field campaign conducted in Grand Banks, one of the world’s foggiest areas, for improving the understanding and predictability of marine fog. Our findings indicate historical understanding of marine fog life cycle requires a fundamental rethink to incorporate complexities of scale interactions. Fog covers 15 decades of spatial scales, wherein megameter-scale synoptic systems sway millimeter-scale turbulent eddies, within which micron-scale fog droplets spawn on either tens (bioaerosols) or hundreds (sea salt) of nanometer-sized marine aerosols. We demonstrate the collusion of meteorological, oceanographic, turbulence, thermodynamic, and (bio)physicochemical processes during marine fog evolution, which should help develop future subgrid parameterizations for numerical weather prediction (NWP) models.

Bulletin of the American Meteorological SocietyVol. 106(6)
University of Notre Dame (US), United States Naval Research Laboratory (US), Dalhousie University (CA), University of Minnesota (US), Scripps Institution of Oceanography (US), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (US), DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (US), Office of Naval Research (US), University of Colorado Boulder (US), York University (CA), University of Utah (US), Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (US), Bedford Institute of Oceanography (CA), University of Manchester (GB), Naval Postgraduate School (US), University of California San Diego (US), Ontario Tech University (CA), Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Applied Health Research (CA), NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory (US), The White House (US), U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology (US), Science Applications International Corporation (United States) (US)
Sight Research UK, Natural Environment Research Council
Openalex Percentile: Top 5%
Child Nutrition and Water Access
5.60
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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