Abstract:
This paper is concerned with the results of a series of airplane psychrometer soundings
that were made over the ocean up to a height of 1500 ft during June, 1945. These
soundings and previous soundings already described in Papers in Physical Oceanography
and Meteorology (VoL. X, No. i) form a new fund of scientifically interesting and valuable
information. The vertical distributions of temperature and humidity revealed by these
observations in a part of the atmosphere previously subjected to but little detailed study
are very different from what was expected; as frequently happens, the unexplored proved
more intricate than was anticipated. It has been possible, nevertheless, to put forth a
preliminary qualitative explanation of the physical phenomena after they were observed.
These measurements contribute to the broad subject, important to meteorologists and
oceanographers alike, of the interaction between atmosphere and ocean and the mutually
dependent distributions of temperature and other properties on both sides of the interface.
The nature of the present results indicates the desirability of further observations
of the same type under different conditions and in different places.
