Wind Stress on Water Surfaces

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Abstract
Various attempts to estimate the total wind stress at the sea surface are briefly reviewed, and the difficulties in the application of the methods used in the past are discussed. The results obtained under natural conditions, that is over larger bodies of water, such as the open sea or large lakes, agree fairly well with each other, whereas great discrepancies are observed with wind tunnel experiments. It is conceivable that the stress values obtained from wind tunnel experiments only hold for the special conditions encountered with small scale flow models. The most important hydrodynamical differences in the flow at both sides of the air-sea interfaces between small scale models and large scale natural bodies of water are pointed out.

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