C-FOG: Life of Coastal Fog

Abstract

A comprehensive multidisciplinary research program on coastal fog provides unique insights on its lifecycle and predictability barriers.C-FOG is a comprehensive bi-national project dealing with the formation, persistence and dissipation (lifecycle) of fog in coastal areas (coastal fog) controlled by land, marine and atmospheric processes. Given its inherent complexity, coastal-fog literature has mainly focused on case studies, and there is a continuing need for research that integrates across processes (e.g., air-sea-land interactions, environmental flow, aerosol transport and chemistry), dynamics (two-phase flow and turbulence), microphysics (nucleation, droplet characterization) and thermodynamics (heat transfer and phase changes) through field observations and modeling. Central to C-FOG was a field campaign in eastern Canada during 1 September to 8 October 2018, covering four land sites in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and an adjacent coastal strip transected by the research vessel Hugh R. Sharp. An array of in situ, path-integrating and remote sensing instruments gathered data across a swath of space-time scales relevant to fog lifecycle. Satellite and reanalysis products, routine meteorological observations, numerical weather prediction model (WRF and COAMPS) outputs, large-eddy simulations and phenomenological modeling underpin the interpretation of field observations in a multiscale and multiplatform framework that help identify and remedy numerical-model deficiencies. An overview of the C-FOG field campaign and some preliminary analysis/findings are presented in this paper.