On the statistics of jet drops produced by breaking waves*

Bubbles bursting at the ocean surface are an important source of sea-spray aerosol. We describe jet drop production, from ensembles of high fidelity numerical simulations of bubble bursting, validated against experimental results. The number of jet drops, their size, and velocity are controlled by the ratio of the bubble size, and the visco-capillary length. We compute the distribution of jet drops formed by a range of bubbles present under a breaking wave which compares well against laboratory experiments. Next, we discuss the applicability of the proposed formulation, in the context of sea spray generation function, by integrating the drop production by a single breaker with the statistics of breaking waves described by the distribution of length of breaking crest. This framework is tested using a state-of-the-art spectral wave model WAVEWATCH-3 leading to a sea-state dependent sea spray generation which compares well with existing field measurements and rationalize some of the scatter in the data.