International Indian Ocean Expedition Meteorological Monographs
This monograph develops a Lagrangian diagnostic scheme for large-scale frictional convergence in the boundary layer of the oceanic tropics using observed pressure and wind fields. The horizontal equations of motion, including Guldberg Mohn friction, are solved as an initial value problem for a constant Coriolis parameter, observed pressure gradients and initial winds during a one-hour period of integration. A variable Coriolis parameter is simulated by assigning a new value at each hour from computed values of the north-south coordinate. Examples are largely confined to mean distributions of pressure and wind in both Indian and Pacific oceans. Thus, a family of steadystate trajectories is determined for a given region.
Various kinematical properties are computed, including horizontal divergence, and are interpreted diagnostically using the divergence equation. This analysis shows that the divergence of both Coriolis and pressure are equally important in determining the striking variations of horizontal velocity divergence along sample trajectories.
The computed velocity divergence was found to compare favorably with observed distributions of mean cloudiness and rainfall in both Indian and Pacific oceans.
The study will be of interest to meteorologists, physical oceanographers, climatologists, and physical geographers.
The International Indian Ocean Expedition (1960-65) was designed to observe, describe, and possibly explain in the circulations of ocean and atmosphere, the exchanges across their interface, the chemical composition and distribution of living things in the ocean, and the bottom topography and coastal structure of an ocean which is more extensive than Asia and Africa combined.
Involving the scientific staffs and equipment of some 25 countries, 44 research vessels, and numerous airborne data-collecting devices and satellites, the expedition was planned by a scientific committee on ocean research (SCOR) of the International Council of Scientific Unions and was jointly sponsored by SCOR and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO.
It is too soon to say what impact the data from the Indian Ocean Expedition will have upon the lives and fortunes of the teeming peoples inhabiting the littoral of the Indian Ocean. However, the continued study of measurements made at the interface between air and sea may lead to the discovery of how, and to what degree, energy is exchanged between these two interlocked systems, and, when related to world-wide photography and radiometry by weather satellites, how these data can help define the roles of the various elements in the total atmospheric circulation.
These and other facets of general atmospheric circulation over the Indian Ocean are being co-operatively studied by Indian and American meteorologists.
Since January, 1965, weather satellites have made pictures at least once a day of the whole earth. Although at first the information was used primarily to help day-to-day weather forecasting, enough data has now accumulated for scientists to begin climatological studies in a new and serious way.
This monograph reports a pioneering attempt to describe and partly to account for the distribution of average cloudiness for each month from February, 1965, through January, 1967. The work, at first fancied to the Indian Ocean Tropics, was expanded to encompass the whole tropical zone between 30N and 30S. Hand averaging is being continued at the University of Hawaii beyond January 1967 in the expectation that computers will eventually take over the job.
Exploring a vast area where failure of monsoon rains can have disastrous results, Structure of an Arabian Sea Summer Monsoon System is the first of a series of atlases and monographs to be published about the meteorological phase (1963-64) of the International Indian Ocean Expedition
The International Indian Ocean Expedition (1960-65) was designed to observe, describe, and possibly explain the circulations of ocean and atmosphere, the exchanges across their interface, the chemical composition and distribution of living things in the ocean, and the bottom topography and coastal structure of an ocean which is more extensive than Asia and Africa combined.
Involving the scientific staffs and equipment of some 25 countries, 44 research vessels, and numerous airborne data-collecting devices and satellites, the expedition was planned by a scientific committee on oceanic research (SCOR) of the International Council of Scientific Unions and was jointly sponsored by SCOR and UNESCO.
surface. Heat received from the sun dominates all other components of the heat exchange and directly influences the many varied and complex processes taking place in the surface layers of the atmosphere and ocean. It thereby determines the driving forces for all weather systems, of which the monsoon circulation is a striking example. The International Indian Ocean Expedition provided the opportunity to increase substantially an understanding of the distributions of solar radiation and other components of the radiative exchange by means of continuous measurements at several locations.
This monograph describes a series of stations established to measure the amount of radiant heat received from the sun and atmosphere and discusses the results of an analysis of data obtained from them for 1963 and 1964. Information on cloudiness and water-surface temperature was used in the analysis for computing the remaining components of the net exchange of thermal radiation to arrive at monthly averages of net radiative exchange for the two years.
An Investigation of Heat Exchange will be of special interest to meteorologists, physical oceanographers, marine biologists, and limnologists, as well as anyone needing information on the distributions of solar radiation and net radiative exchange for the Indian Ocean north of 25S latitude.
