Editorial: Advances in observations and modeling of physical processes in the marine environment

Marine meteorology is a subfield of meteorology, which deals with the weather and climate and the associated processes in the ocean environment. It is always challenging to understand the atmospheric variability over the ocean and complex interplay of the dynamic and thermodynamic processes in the marine environment (North et al., 2014). Analyses and modeling of high winds, wind surges, tropical cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, fog, lightning, and thunderstorm over the ocean are relevant to scientific interests and practical applications. This Research Topic highlights various methods of using observations and modeling to investigate physical processes in the marine environment. The contributions of the 14 articles in this Research Topic can be divided into four main areas: A) Fog observations and modeling; B) Analysis and modeling of tropical cyclones and typhoons; C) Observations and mechanisms of explosive cyclones and high winds; and D) Analytical and modeling techniques to investigate ocean and atmospheric processes. Understanding the spatial and temporal variability of marine fog is important, and how to improve the forecast skill is also a concern (Koračin and Dorman, 2017). Li et al. investigate the atmospheric circulation and marine atmospheric boundary layer structure associated with marine fog over the northeast Pacific (NEP) in winter, and suggest the eastern flank of the Aleutian low and the northwestern flank of the Pacific subtropical high jointly contribute to a northward air flow over the NEP favoring warm and moist air flows through a cooler sea surface and facilitates the formation of advection-cooling fog. Based on hourly observations from buoys and automatic weather stations distributed in Qingdao and its adjacent islands, Song et al. analyze composite sea fog penetration OPEN ACCESS