CONCLUSIONS AND COMMENTS 
This is a preliminary report primarily directed at presenting a 
method of classifying harbors and nearshore areas with respect to 
water temperatures, The secondary objective is to present a way of 
estimating the most probable temperatures and thermal structures in the 
various categories. 
One of the shortcomings in this report is the quantity of data used 
in the preparation of Tables I through XII. Data in the form needed to 
compile such tables are difficult to obtain. The observations used were 
taken at various and unknown stages of tide, at various states of wind, 
wave, and turbulence conditions, at different locations with respect to 
river mouths, without regard to the volume of river discharge, under 
various bottom slope conditions which partially determine the volume 
of water exchanging energy with air, and without knowledge of the 
influence of internal waves. 
It is apparent that larger samples areneededto mask some of these 
unknown influences inherent in these samples of data. Nevertheless, 
the data compiled for this study are presented as an approach to 
estimation of temperature values and thermal structure in the various 
categories of climate, tide range, and fresh water influence. 
The tables in this report do not give any indication of diurnal 
temperature variations of the upper layers of the ocean. It is well known 
that these variations are small in the open ocean and that the variation 
is smallest in high latitudes and greatestinlow latitude tropical waters. 
Diurnal variations in temperature decrease rapidly with depth and 
become generally insignificant below the surface. In shallow coastal 
and inland waters diurnal temperature variations are somewhat greater 
than in deep water, but in most instances the variations are less than 
2° C. Leipper (Reference No. 14) and Laevastu (University of Hawaii, 
1962) have shown special cases where rather large variations take place 
in tropical tidal pools or in anarea where upwelling occurs in stratified 
(summer) water and tidal currents move over an irregular bottom. 
Leipper mentions changes of the order of 7 or 8 degrees Fahrenheit 
in the summer at Scripps Pier in California and Laevastu mentions 
changes in tropic waters in tidal pools of as high as 10 degrees 
Fahrenheit. Dietrich (Reference No. 7) discusses diurnal temperature 
variations in both deep and shallow water locations. The following 
summary shows values of diurnal temperature changes in water under 
several various conditions. 
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