Microphysics of Air-Sea Exchanges

Abstract

The research efforts are targeted at improving our understanding of the microphysics of air-sea exchanges, especially the physics of the oceanic thermal skin and diurnally-influenced layers. This will lead to better assimilation of satellite-derived sea-surface temperature (SST) fields into meaningful climatologies and to more physically-based applications of satellite data to studies of air-sea interactions and to other naval applications. The constellation of the new generation of satellites with infrared radiometers for SST measurements has a range of local over-pass times and, because of the diurnally forced fluctuation in SST and of the fluctuations of the skin effect in response to differing air-sea fluxes, this creates a problem in combining these fields into a reliable, consistent composite analysis. The results of this new research will improve the reliability of such composite analyses for naval applications.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 30, 2001
Accession Number
ADA624942

Entities

People

  • M. A. Donelan
  • O. B. Brown
  • Peter J. Minnett
  • R. H. Evans

Organizations

  • Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Artificial Satellites
  • Assimilation
  • Atmospheric Sciences
  • Climatology
  • Composite Materials
  • Demographic Cohorts
  • Detectors
  • Infrared Detectors
  • Marine Atmospheres
  • Measurement
  • Radiative Transfer
  • Radiometers
  • Reliability
  • Sea Surface Temperature
  • Surface Temperature
  • Temperature Gradients

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers

Technology Areas

  • Space