Transfer processes at the air-sea interface

Abstract
Near-surface data from ships, buoys, aircraft and a microwave remote-sensing satellite have been used to estimate the fluxes of momentum, heat and water vapour at the sea surface over a 200 km x 200 km area during the Joint Air-Sea Interaction Experiment of 1978. In particular, daily means of the surface heat balance and the wind stress are presented. Generally, the sensible heat flux was found to be less than 25 % of the latent heat flux. Over periods of a day the total upward heat flux was about a third of the net radiation, implying that a significant proportion of the available energy went into heating the ocean. The Ekman pumping accounted for most of the divergence in the atmospheric boundary layer but only 10 % at most of that in the upper ocean. Some case studies of the horizontal variation of the fluxes in relation to larger scales are also discussed and it is suggested that the fluxes are modulated by mesoscale patterns in sea-surface temperature.

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