TM No, 377 



with the exception of Francis et al (1953)* Bowden and Fairbairn (1956), 

 and Stewart and Grant (1962), there is little evidence that people have 

 given much thought to the importance of measuring turbulence and to the 



potentialities of such data* In general,, efforts have been directed toward 

 the technical problems of instrumentation o Once these problems were more 

 or less overcome , a few measurements were made and the project was dropped, 

 probably because of an aversion to having to examine large volumes of 

 complex and perhaps nebulous data that would certainly not hold the interest 

 of an instrumentation engineer,, 



Studies of Atmospheric Turbulence =- No mention has been made thus far 

 of atmospheric turbulence studies,, Essentially , all of the near-surface 

 wind measurements were made in order to understand wind turbulence and 

 stress o Hence ,<, instrumentation has been developed to measure shear and 

 fluctuation properties of the moving air. Whereas oceanographers have,, 

 for the most part;, confined their measurements to mean flows at a single 

 depths meteorologists have made very serious attempts to measure the energy 

 and momentum transfer in the lower layers of the atmosphere by inferences 

 from wind shear over land, Richardson number (stability), and even direct 

 Reynolds stress determinations See, for example, Cramer (1959) and Cramer, 

 Record, and -"SLllsaan (1962), 'Ihe results of these studies. and the statis- 

 tical methods developed to cope with the data have greatly added to the 

 picture „ For same reviews of the above studies, see Frenkiel (1962), 

 Sutton (1953)^ and Priestly (1959) « 



Unfortunately, the meteorologist has confined his attention to the 

 upper medium of the air-sea interface and has made few attempts to express 

 the energy transfer through the interface „ Estimates are available of the 

 horizontal momentum and kinetic energy transfer through the lower air layers, 

 but little information is available about the mode of transfer through or 

 the interaction with the ocean surface layers. A general discussion of the 

 thermodynamics of the upper ocean layers, in which the above problems are 

 mentioned, is presented by Fniilips (1963)0 



Measurements to determine the Reynolds stress in the atmosphere have 

 been undertaken by many (e.g., Deacon, 1955). However, most of our know- 

 ledge of wind stress upon water is rather empirical and is based upon 

 measurements of the following nature ° 



1. Determination of the vertical wind profile or shear above the 

 water and conjecture about the stresses at the air-sea interface 1 e.g., 

 Roll (1952), Selstrom (1953)* Wust (1937)* Montgomery (1936), Bruch (19^0)* 

 and Ofcornthwaite and Halstead (l$k2) 



2. Msasureaents of the wind pile-up (Windstau) of enclosed regions of 

 water while strong steady winds are blowing across them, and estimates from 

 this data of the aean stress values % e.g., Palmen (1932), Keuligan (1951), 

 and Helstrom (1953). 



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