A laboratory observation of the surface temperature and velocity distributions on a wavy and windy air-water interface

摘要

Temperature and velocity distributions of the water surface are examined experimentally with infrared imaging techniques. The surface velocity is determined from the movement of the pattern of surface temperature cell. It is found that the mean wind drift is about 30%u(*), much less than the widely cited measurements of 55%u(*). Although many complicated thermal and dynamical processes control the surface temperature, we found that the probability distribution function (PDF) of the standardized water surface temperature does not vary significantly with wind speed. The increasing nonlinear effects of wave orbital motions and wave breaking on surface motion are shown by the similarity and trend of change in the PDFs of the water surface velocity normalized by the wave orbital velocity at different wind speeds. The standard deviation of the speed distribution increases with the wind speed while the basic skewed distribution shape remains. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics. [References: 18]