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Ward & Donelan 2006
Ward, B. and Donelan, M.A. (2006). Thermometric measurements of the molecular sublayer at the air-water interface. Geophysical Research Letters 33: doi: 10.1029/2005GL024769. issn: 0094-8276.

A series of measurements was conducted in the Air-Sea Interaction Saltwater Tank (ASIST) to study the response of the air-water interfacial molecular sublayer under various heat flux and wind speed conditions. In-situ gradients were measured with a platinum-plated tungsten wire microthermometer, which resolved the temperature of the thermally conductive sublayer. Air-sea heat flux was controlled by changing the air-water temperature difference (ΔTAW) and the wind speed, and measurements were made for three ΔTAW regimes over a range of wind speeds. A function was fitted to the measured temperature profiles as a way of extracting the boundary layer thickness in a consistent fashion, from which the λ coefficient after Saunders (1967) was computed. This dataset returned a mean λ coefficient of 2.4 ¿ 0.5, which was generally lower than previous studies, and was found to be independent of wind speed in the range of 1 to 9 ms-1.

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Abstract

Keywords
Oceanography, General, Remote sensing and electromagnetic processes (0689, 2487, 3285, 4455, 6934), Oceanography, Physical, Air/sea interactions (0312, 3339), Oceanography, Physical, Fine structure and microstructure, Oceanography, Physical, Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes, Oceanography, Physical, Instruments and techniques
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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