Characteristics of the Drag Coefficient over a Tropical Environment in Convective Conditions*

Abstract

Abstract The turbulent data over a tropical region are utilized to analyze the observational behavior of the drag coefficient with respect to wind speed U and the stability parameter in convective conditions. The drag coefficient is observed to follow the power-law profile with respect to U, with large values in low winds and relatively lower values with moderate-wind conditions. Depending on the stability regimes, regression curves for with U are proposed. The variation of with is bounded by a curve. This curve first shows increasing behavior with until it reaches a peak at and then decreases with increasing instability. A mathematical analysis based on Monin–Obukhov similarity (MOS) reveals that increases monotonically with increasing instability. This suggests that MOS theory is able to capture the increasing nature of in weakly to moderately unstable conditions. However, it is unable to explain the observed decreasing behavior of with in moderately to strongly unstable conditions in the tropics within the framework of commonly used similarity functions.