A simple experiment simulating the jet feature of breaking waves is conducted to study quantitative effects of the water temperature on the generation of bubbles at the air–water interface and their entrainment into the water column. The results indicate that there is a critical water temperature for the inception of bubbles. Such a critical temperature can be attributed to changes of the surface tension and viscosity, both of which decrease as water temperature increases. Field measurements of the bubble entrainment depth, bubble size spectrum, and whitecap coverage are shown to have similar temperature dependencies as our observations.
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Hwang et al. (1991) studied this question.