Marine Turbulent Boundary Layer Fluxes of Water Vapor, Sensible Heat and Momentum During Gate

Abstract

One of the major objectives of the GARP Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE)* was to estimate effects of small-scale tropical weather systems on synoptic-scale circulations (Rasmussen and Murray, 1976). The scales of motion in the 10–5000 m band were measured by aircraft. They complement the coverage of time and space scales by other measurements from buoys, ships and satellite. The gust probe measurements of the means and extremes of temperature, moisture and eddy fluxes in the boundary layer are described. (The entire GATE Program is described by the International and Scientific Management Group for GATE, 1974). A GATE Workshop on data intercomparisons and analysis was recently held in Boulder, Colorado (July-August 1977). One conclusion reached from aircraft intercomparisons was that atmospheric variability was as large as that between aircraft for scales under about 100 m while agreement between aircraft for scales greater than a few hundred meters were well determined by each aircraft in the intercomparison flights. This then means that the results presented below, although based on data most familiar to the authors, would be expected to be the same as those obtained for any one of the aircraft or from a composite of all aircraft data.