[1] GasEx-2001, a 15-day air-sea carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) exchange study conducted in the equatorial Pacific, used a combination of ships, buoys, and drifters equipped with ocean and atmospheric sensors to assess variability and surface mechanisms controlling air-sea CO 2 fluxes. Direct covariance and profile method air-sea CO 2 fluxes were measured together with the surface ocean and marine boundary layer processes. The study took place in February 2001 near 125°W, 3°S in a region of high CO 2 . The diurnal variation in the air-sea CO 2 difference was 2.5%, driven predominantly by temperature effects on surface solubility. The wind speed was 6.0 ± 1.3 m s À1 , and the atmospheric boundary layer was unstable with conditions over the range À1 < z/L < 0. Diurnal heat fluxes generated daytime surface ocean stratification and subsequent large nighttime buoyancy fluxes. The average CO 2 flux from the ocean to the atmosphere was determined to be 3.9 mol m À2 yr À1 , with nighttime CO 2 fluxes increasing by 40% over daytime values because of a strong nighttime increase in (vertical) convective velocities. The 15 days of air-sea flux measurements taken during GasEx-2001 demonstrate some of the systematic environmental trends of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. The fact that other physical processes, in addition to wind, were observed to control the rate of CO 2 transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere indicates that these processes need to be taken into account in local and global biogeochemical models. These local processes can vary on regional and global scales. The GasEx-2001 results show a weak wind dependence but a strong variability in processes governed by the diurnal heating cycle. This implies that any changes in the incident radiation, including atmospheric cloud dynamics, phytoplankton biomass, and surface ocean stratification may have significant feedbacks on the amount and variability of air-sea gas exchange. This is in sharp contrast with previous field studies of air-sea gas exchange, which showed that wind was the dominating forcing function. The results suggest that gas transfer parameterizations that rely solely on wind will be insufficient for regions with low to intermediate winds and strong insolation.

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[1] The most commonly used flux-profile relationships are based on Monin-Obukhov (MO) similarity theory. These flux-profile relationships are required in indirect methods such as the bulk aerodynamic, profile, and inertial dissipation methods to estimate the fluxes over the ocean. These relationships are almost exclusively derived from previous field experiments conducted over land. However, the use of overland measurements to infer surface fluxes over the ocean remains questionable, particularly close to the ocean surface where wave-induced forcing can affect the flow. This study investigates the flux profile relationships over the open ocean using measurements made during the 2000 Fluxes, Air-Sea Interaction, and Remote Sensing (FAIRS) and 2001 GasEx experiments. These experiments provide direct measurement of the atmospheric fluxes along with profiles of water vapor and temperature. The specific humidity data are used to determine parameterizations of the dimensionless gradients using functional forms of two commonly used relationships. The best fit to the Businger-Dyer relationship [Businger, 1988] is found using an empirical constant of a q = 13.4 ± 1.7. The best fit to a formulation that has the correct form in the limit of local free convection [e.g., Wyngaard, 1973] is found using a q = 29.8 ± 4.6. These values are in good agreement with the consensus values from previous overland experiments and the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE) 3.0 bulk algorithm [Fairall et al., 2003]; e.g., the COARE algorithm uses empirical constants of 15 and 34.2 for the Businger-Dyer and convective forms, respectively. Although the flux measurements were made at a single elevation and local similarity scaling is applied, the good agreement implies that MO similarity is valid within the marine atmospheric surface layer above the wave boundary layer.

A surface mooring was deployed in the Gulf Stream for 15 months to investigate the role of air-sea interaction in mode water formation and other processes. The accuracies of the near-surface meteorological and oceanographic measurements are investigated. In addition, the impacts of these measurement errors on the estimation and study of the air-sea fluxes in the Gulf Stream are discussed. Pre-and postdeployment calibrations together with in situ comparison between shipboard and moored sensors supported the identification of biases due to sensor drifts, sensor electronics, and calibration errors. A postdeployment field study was used to further investigate the performance of the wind sensors. The use of redundant sensor sets not only supported the filling of data gaps but also allowed an examination of the contribution of random errors. Air-sea fluxes were also analyzed and computed from both Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE) bulk parameterization and using direct covariance measurements. The basic conclusion is that the surface buoy deployed in the Gulf Stream to support air-sea interaction research was successful, providing an improved 15-month record of surface meteorology, upper-ocean variability, and air-sea fluxes with known accuracies. At the same time, the coincident deployment of mean meteorological and turbulent flux sensors proved to be a successful strategy to certify the validity of the bulk formula fluxes over the midrange of wind speeds and to support further work to address the present shortcomings of the bulk formula methods at the low and high wind speeds.

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