Near sea-surface air pressure and wind velocities at several levels above the instantaneous water surface were measured using a wave follower during the Marine Remote Sensing (MARSEN) Experiment. The rate of momentum transfer from wind to waves is determined from the air pressure data. From the wind velocity measurements, the wave-induced airflow and its coherence with waves are obtained for various wind velocities and phase speeds of the ocean waves. The pressure results indicate that momentum transfer to waves can be specified by the equation &ggr;i=0.12 (μ-1)2 in the ranges μ=1 to 7.4, where &ggr;i is related to the imaginary part of the wave-induced pressure, as defined by equation (2), μ=(8/3&rgr;)(U/c), U is wind speed at 10 m above the mean water level, and c is wave phase speed. The wind velocity results indicate that the wave-induced airflow is much smaller than the mean wind speed. An empirical equation is proposed for the modulation of atmospheric transfer to short waves induced by the orbital velocity of long waves. Such modulation explains adequately the excess modulation of short waves by long waves as suggested by Wright et al. <1980> when the short waves are 13 cm long but not when they are 2.3 cm long. The agreement for the 13 cm waves supports their suggestion that the excess modulation is due to a modulation in atmospheric transfer. For the shorter 2.3 cm waves the less adequate agreement and the scatter in the results of Wright et al. suggest that other mechanisms such as short wave blocking by long wave orbital velocity, short wave breaking, and other strong nonlinear transfer among the short wave spectral components also may be contributing to the excess modulation of short waves by long waves.