A preliminary analysis of the vertical heat flux at five meters over water

Abstract

The members of the Marine Meteorology Project of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have designed equipment for the measurement or the vertical heat flux. This consists of a small vertical vane, a heated thermistor anemometer, and a bead thermistor thermometer, all mounted within about 20 centimeters or each other. The instruments were described in detail by Parson and Bunker. The anemometer was not temperature compensated, so that, the wind speed itself is possibly not very accurate; however, the wind speed enters the computation or the heat flux only through the vertical velocity, which is not sensitive to errors in the horizontal speed.