Sea smoke
fog which is formed when very cold air moves over warmer water
Sea smoke, frost smoke, or steam fog is fog which is formed when very cold air moves over warmer water. Arctic sea smoke is sea smoke forming over small patches of open water in sea ice.
It forms when a light wind of very cold air mixes with a shallow layer of saturated warm air immediately above the warmer water. The warmer air is cooled beyond the dew point and can no longer hold as much water vapor, so the excess condenses out. The effect is similar to the "steam" produced over a hot bath or a hot drink, or even an exercising person.
Sea smoke has a turbulent appearance and may form spiraling columns. It is usually not very high and lookouts on ships can usually see over it (but small boats may have very poor visibility) because the fog is confined to the layer of warm air above the sea. However, sea smoke columns 20–30 m (70–100 ft) high have been observed. Because this type of fog requires very low air temperatures, it is uncommon in temperate climates, but is common in the Arctic and Antarctic.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Sea smoke” is fog which is formed when very cold air moves over warmer water. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through smoke, formed and when, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4128888. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sea smoke” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.