L. Hasse – författare

During the past decade, man''s centuries-old interest in marine me­ teorology and oceanography has broadened. Ocean and atmosphere are now treated as coupled parts of one system; the resulting interest in air-sea interaction problems has led to a rapid growth in the sophistication of instruments and measurement techniques. This book has been designed as a reference text which describes, albng with the instruments themselves, the accumulated practical experi­ ence of experts engaged in field observations of air-sea interac­ tions. It is meant to supplement rather than replace manuals on standard routine observations or instnunentation handbooks. At the inception a textbook was planned, which would contain only well tested methods and instruments. It was quickly discovered that for the book to be useful many devices and techniques would have to be included which are still evolving rapidly. The reader is therefore cautioned to take nothing in these pages for granted. Certainly, every contributor is an expert, but while some are back­ ed up by generations of published work, others are pioneers. The choice of topics, of course, is debatable. The types of observa­ tions included are not exhaustive and topics such as marine aero­ sols and radio-tracers are omitted, as was the general subject of remote sensing, which was felt to be too broad and evol ving too rapidly. The guideline adopted in limiting size was maximum use­ fulness to ''a trained experimentalist new to the field''.

During the past decade, man's centuries-old interest in marine me­ teorology and oceanography has broadened. Ocean and atmosphere are now treated as coupled parts of one system; the resulting interest in air-sea interaction problems has led to a rapid growth in the sophistication of instruments and measurement techniques. This book has been designed as a reference text which describes, albng with the instruments themselves, the accumulated practical experi­ ence of experts engaged in field observations of air-sea interac­ tions. It is meant to supplement rather than replace manuals on standard routine observations or instnunentation handbooks. At the inception a textbook was planned, which would contain only well tested methods and instruments. It was quickly discovered that for the book to be useful many devices and techniques would have to be included which are still evolving rapidly. The reader is therefore cautioned to take nothing in these pages for granted. Certainly, every contributor is an expert, but while some are back­ ed up by generations of published work, others are pioneers. The choice of topics, of course, is debatable. The types of observa­ tions included are not exhaustive and topics such as marine aero­ sols and radio-tracers are omitted, as was the general subject of remote sensing, which was felt to be too broad and evol ving too rapidly. The guideline adopted in limiting size was maximum use­ fulness to 'a trained experimentalist new to the field'.

Marine Meteorology has a long tradition, and studies of surface meteorological conditions have been published repeatedly since the end of the last century. Recently, the demand has grown for more detailed descriptions. This stems both from the public''s interest in climatic change and from our growing ability to analyse atmospher­ ic and oceanic processes with the aid of numerical models. These models require input data on a regular, finely spaced grid; the increased amount of oceanic data available permits us to provide detailed charts both of surface meteorological conditions and of the air-sea interaction. The present climate atlas of the North Atlantic Ocean is based on data originally evaluated by Andrew F. Bunker of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He analysed observations from the ships of the Voluntary Observing Fleet in many parts of the world oceans to calculate the various components of the heat budget at the air­ sea interface. When Bunker died in 1979, he left the major part of his data and results in an unpublished state. Since he had expended considerable effort to validate the data and calculate air-sea fluxes by the so-called "individual method" , it was considered worthwhile to make this unique set of climate data available to the scientific community. Bunker''s analysed fields for the North Atlantic Ocean are presented in this atlas. It deals with the surface climate of the North Atlantic Ocean from the equator to 65°N, in the period 1941 to 1972.