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Water Vapor Flux at the Sea Surface

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Book cover Boundary Layer Studies and Applications

Abstract

Methods and instrumentation for determining the rate of evaporation at the sea surface are reviewed. At experimental sites free of local influences, there is a consensus that the evaporation coefficient in neutral conditions C EN = 1.2 × 10−3 at low and moderate wind speeds. Combining this with Businger-Dyer flux-gradient formulas, a parameterization scheme is proposed. Evaporation of spray droplets from breaking waves is expected to cause C EN to increase at high wind speeds, but no direct observations of this are found. Recently it has become possible to estimate water vapor flux in tropical regions from satellite data, opening the possiblity of studying large-scale evaporative events as a function of both time and space.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, P.O. Box 1006, Dartmouth, N.S., Canada, B2Y 4A2

    Stuart D. Smith (Visiting scholar)

  2. Department of Atmospheric Sciences AK-40, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 98195, USA

    Stuart D. Smith (Visiting scholar)

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  1. Stuart D. Smith
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R. E. Munn

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© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Smith, S.D. (1989). Water Vapor Flux at the Sea Surface. In: Munn, R.E. (eds) Boundary Layer Studies and Applications. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0975-5_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0975-5_17

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-6928-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-0975-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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