Ocean water covers 71% of Earth. And all of it is affected by turbulence, which mixes the ocean by transferring momentum, heat, chemicals, and organisms. Near the ocean’s surface, turbulence significantly influences the exchange of gas, heat, and momentum between the ocean and the atmosphere; those exchanges, in turn, affect weather and climate. Near-surface turbulence is greatest within breaking waves, in the whitecaps formed when a brisk ocean wind drags across the sea surface. There, turbulence, as measured by the rate at which energy is dissipated in turbulent motion, can exceed oceanic background values by more than seven orders of magnitude.
Whitecaps are white because they contain bubbles of air that are entrained and fragmented by the fluid turbulence generated by surface waves as they break. Those bubbles influence many of the exchange processes that affect weather and climate. As they dissolve in a breaking wave, they enhance the transport...
