Land Surface Layer Characteristics During Monsoon at a Tropical Station

—The atmospheric surface layer over land may behave differently in the tropics, particu larly during the monsoon. A preliminary attempt is made to observe the behavior of surface layer characteristics such as fluxes of momentum, sensible heat and latent heat, friction velocity, friction temperature, M-O length scale, Richardson number and Bowen’s ratio over Kharagpur (22°20′N, 87°18′E), a typical moist tropical station. The diurnal and day-to-day variations have been studied. It is observed that during the active phase of the monsoon the sensible heat flux and Bowen’s ratio are low. The diurnal variation is apparent for most parameters. Mostly near neutral conditions are observed.