Ship-board measurements and estimations of air-sea fluxes in the western tropical pacific during TOGA COARE

Abstract

Direct air-sea flux measurements were made on R/V Kexue #1 at 4 ° S, 156 ° E during the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere (TOGA) Coupled Ocean-Atmospheric Response Experiment (COARE) Intensive Observation Period (IOP). An array of six accelerometers was used to measure the motion of the anchored ship, and a sonic anemometer and Lyman-α hygrometer were used to measure the turbulent wind vector and specific humidity. The contamination of the turbulent wind components by ship motion was largely removed by an improvement of a procedure due to Shao based on the acceleration signals. The scheme of the wind correction for ship motion is briefly outlined. Results are presented from data for the best wind direction relative to the ship to minimize flow distortion effects. Both the time series and the power spectra of the sonic-measured wind components show swell-induced ship motion contamination, which is largely removed by the accelerometer correction scheme. There was less contamination in the longitudinal wind component than in the vertical and transverse components. The spectral characteristics of the surface-layer turbulence properties are compared with those from previous land and ocean results. Momentum and latent heat fluxes were calculated by eddy correlation and compared to those estimated by the inertial dissipation method and the TOGA COARE bulk formula. The estimations of wind stress determined by eddy correlation are smaller than those from the TOGA COARE bulk formula, especially for higher wind speeds, while those from the bulk formula and inertial dissipation technique are generally in agreement. The estimations of latent heat flux from the three different methods are in reasonable agreement. The effect of the correction for ship motion on latent heat fluxes is not as large as on momentum fluxes.