Abstract
Time series of temperature, humidity and horizontal wind speed are presented from data collected at two tower sites during the 1968 Barbados Experiment. Marked and periodic fluctuations on the convective scale are evident in the traces. It is postulated that these fluctuations are due to moderate cumulus convection. Estimates show that departures in temperature and humidity at the surface must be due to downward mixing from near or above the convective cloud base. Such cloud layer-subcloud layer mixing must change the thermodynamic character of the subcloud layer. This in turn suggests that cloud convection may play an important part in governing the transport of energy across the air-sea interface.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aspliden, C. I.: 1971, Energy Distribution in the Tropical Troposphere, Ph. D. Dissertation, Dept. of Meteorology, Florida State University, Tallahassee.
Bartlett, M.: 1955, An Introduction to Stochastic Processes, Cambridge University Press, 312 pp.
Cooley, J. W. and Tukey, J. W.: 1965, An Algorithm for the Machine Calculation of Complex Fourier Series, Mathematics of Computation, 19, 297–301.
DeSouza, R. L.: 1972, A Study of Atmospheric Flow Over a Tropical Island, Ph. D. Dissertation, Dept. of Meteorology, Florida State University, Tallahassee.
Fankhauser, J. C.: 1971, Thunderstorm-Environment Interactions Determined from Aircraft and Radar Observations, Monthly Weather Rev. 99, 171–192.
Gill, G. C. and Hexter, P. L.: 1972, Some Instrumentation Definitions for Use by Meteorologists and Engineers, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 53, 846–851.
Hadlock, R. K., Seguin, W., and Garstang, M.: 1972, A Radiation Shield for Thermistor Deployment in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer, J. Appl. Meteorol. 11, 393–399.
Hidy, G. M.: 1972, A View of Recent Air-Sea Interaction Research, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 53, 1083–1102.
James, D. M.: 1953, Fluctuations of Temperature Below Cumulus Clouds, Quart. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc. 79, 425–428.
Lenschow, D. H.: 1970, Airplane Measurements of Planetary Boundary Layer Structure, J. Appl. Meteorol. 9, 874–884.
Malkus, J. S.: 1958, On the Structure of the Trade Wind Moist Layer, Papers in Phys. Oceanog. and Meteorol., Mass. Inst. of Tech. and Woods Hole Oceanog. Inst., Cambridge and Woods Hole, Mass. 13, 47 pp.
Malkus, J. S.: 1962, Large-Scale Interactions, The Sea 1, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 288–294.
Riehl, H. and Malkus, J. S.: 1958, On the Heat Balance in the Equatorial Trough Zone, Geophysica 6, 503–508.
Riehl, H., Yeh, T. C., Malkus, J. S., and LaSeur, N. E.: 1951, The Northeast Trade in the Pacific Ocean, Quart. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc. 77, 598–696.
Scorer, R. S. and Ludlum, F. H.: 1953, Bubble Theory of Penetrative Convection, Quart. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc. 79, 317–341.
Warner, J. and Telford, J. W.: 1963, Some Patterns of Convection in the Lower Atmosphere, J. Atmos. Sci. 20, 313–318.
Warner, J. and Telford, J. W.: 1967, Convection Below Cloud Base, J. Atmos. Sci. 24, 374–382.
Zipser, E. J.: 1969, The Role of Organized Unsaturated Convective Downdrafts in the Structure and Rapid Decay of an Equatorial Disturbance, J. Appl. Meteorol. 8, 799–814.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ulanski, S.L., Hadlock, R.K. & Garstang, M. The role of convection in surface property and velocity fluctuations. Boundary-Layer Meteorol 6, 183–195 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00232483
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00232483