A review of the FATIMA Yellow Sea field campaign research

Marine fog plays an important role in ship and aircraft operations as well as in marine ecosystems and climate change. Fog is affected by boundary layer processes occurring at varying time and space scales. Its monitoring and forecasting can be challenging in marine environments because of the limited number of observation sites, such as buoys and ships. Therefore, the Fog and Turbulence in Marine Atmosphere (FATIMA) field campaign was designed to study the marine fog life cycle with high fog occurrence. FATIMA-YS was established over the Yellow Sea region of the Republic of Korea from 20 June to 9 July 2023. Observations were collected using the South Korean research vessel (R/V) Onnuri, the Atmospheric Research Aircraft (NARA), three Korean Ocean Research Stations supported by R/V Gisang-1, meteorological stations including buoys, and the Korean Meteorological Administration weather stations. In-situ instruments on the R/V and aircraft provided extensive observations of various microphysical and dynamical parameters, aerosols and gases, and radiation parameters. Satellite platforms (Himawari and Geostationary Ocean Color Image) together with ship-based millimeter cloud radar, lidar, and microwave radiometer have also been used for fog monitoring and simulation validation. During the campaign, eight Intensive Observational Periods (IOPs) were performed, and visibility changed from tens of meters up to tens of kilometers, and liquid water content reached up to 0.5 g·m⁻³ during heavy fog conditions. Marine fog usually occurs due to advection processes, but fog formation was found to be highly related to the mixing of air masses, turbulence, and ocean cold-water upwelling, whereas its maturity and dissipation were strongly correlated with mixing processes. Preliminary results, extensive new technologies, and the project campaign description with IOP summaries are provided. Finally, the future work and challenges are discussed.