Local interactions between the sea and the air at monthly and annual time scales

Abstract

SUMMARYA statistical analysis of wind, air, dew-point and sea-temperature records from all nine weather ships in the North Atlantic shows local variations between years which are highly significant when compared with variations within months. The fluctuations show a consistent pattern with a scale of more than 500 miles in the atmosphere and a persistence over several months. T h e horizontal extent of sea-surface temperature anomalies appears to be somewhat smaller, but they tend to last longer than air-temperature anomalies.Short-period variations in the flux of latent and sensible heat are due predominantly to atmospheric variations, particularly in winter. The effect of sea-surface temperature anomalies is somewhat greater in summer, though it becomes significant only on the annual time scale.

Applicability of Micrometeorological Transfer Coefficient to Estimate the Long-period Means of Fluxes in the Air-sea Interface

“…The open and the solid symbols denote the positive and the negative numerators, respectively. The left figure is for the station D and the right one for the station V. A value of <u'2>/<u>2 for the averaging time of 30 days at the station D, as calculated from 14-year data by Kraus and Morrison (1966), is known to be 0.22 which is nearly the same as the present statistics from one-year data. layer (Lumley and Panofsky, 1964;Busch and Panofsky, 1968;Panofsky and Mares, 1968;Miyake et al, 1970;Pond et al, 1971;and Phelps and Pond, 1971) show that there are energy peaks in horizontal wind fluctuation in the periods of 3-5 days and of about 100 seconds (under the condition of wind velocity u=10 m/s at a level z=10 m), and that there is a peak in each spectrum of momentum, sensible heat and moisture fluxes in a period from 3 to 50 seconds.…”

Nature and Possible Causes of the Northeastern United States Drought During 1962–65

“…In the second place, even though geographical features of the globe are fixed, there are sizeable variations in characteristics of the land and water surfaces in the same season of different years. For example, temperatures of the surface waters of the ocean are now known to undergo fluctuations of several degrees F. between the same month of dserent years [4]. These variations in ocean temperature are broadscale, so that water temperature anomalies of 3" to 6" existing over areas as large as the United States may frequently be found in the Pacific [5].…”