sea to the air; and this in turn may change the atmospheric circulation, 

 thus altering the wind stress. 



Nevertheless, meteorologists have found it convenient — when they 

 have considered the oceans at all — to think of the oceans and other large 

 water "bodies as inert systems with inifinite heat capacity. In this way we 

 have been able to ignore "interactions" between sea and air entirely, and 

 have treated the sea surface as fixed in time, and unaffected by the 

 atmosphere . 



To allow for the obviously non-negligible annual variation in sea 

 surface temperatures, we may use climatological mean monthly sea surface 

 temperatures, rather than mean annuals, and in some cases shorter time 

 averages. But, for the most part, the meteorologist has taken the ocean 

 state as "given" and has not attempted to predict it. 



In extended and long-range weather forecasting and to a lesser extent 

 in short-range forecasting, some attempts have been made to employ the water 

 temperature anomalies as meteorological predictors . The underlying principle 

 in these efforts, however, is again the relative persistence of oceanographic 

 features — in this case sea temperature anomalies — compared with the var- 

 iability of the atmosphere . A one-way transfer, from sea to air, without 

 interaction, is implicit in these applications. 



Of course, meteorologists are fully aware of the fact that the sea 

 responds to the atmosphere . But we have generally been unable to incorporate 

 oceanographic predictions in our work, either qualitatively or quantitatively. 

 In fact we have made hardly any progress even with the relatively simpler 

 one-way transfer problem. 



We have come closest to dealing with a true air-sea interaction in 

 practical meteorology in connection with the hurricane problem. Several 

 investigators using synoptic ocean data, have presented interesting, albeit 

 inconclusive evidence pointing to the possibility that hurricanes may tend 

 to form over anomalously warm water, move along warm water anomaly "channels," 

 avoid cold water, or dissipate over cold water. At the same time, these and 

 other studies have shown that the hurricane — whether through upwelling, 

 stirring, evaporation or radiative -convective heat transfer — cools the sea 

 in its immediate vicinity, and appears to leave a cold water wake behind the 

 storm. So large is this effect of the storm on the sea, that it is obviously 

 unrealistic to assume a fixed sea temperature anomaly field in hurricane 

 prediction. 



To the oceanographer, looking at the underside of the air- sea boundary, 

 oceanographic prediction depends almost entirely on accurate prediction of 

 the atmosphere. Current anomalies, waves, and temperature anomalies — as 

 well as salinity, oxygen and other oceanic anomalies — are ultimately 

 meteorological in origin. The oceanographic prediction begins with a weather 

 map. Because of the time lag between stomi development and wave generation, 

 plus the travel time of waves, a useful oceanographic prediction can (like a 



