Short-term variability of surface heat budget of the east central Arabian Sea during November, 1992

The analysis of surface meteorological data collected from the east central Arabian Sea during 10-28 November, 1992 revealed considerable variability in the meteorological parameters and heat budget components on both daily and diurnal time scales. The variation of sea surface temperature was well correlated with the variation of net surface heat gain on daily time scale. The overall net surface heat gain and evaporation rate were about 75 W m-z and 0.4 cm day-1 respectively. On the diurnal scale, among all the parameters only the latent heat flux or evaporation showed variation with maxima during morning and late night hours and minimum around local noon. This diurnal variation of latent heat flux was resulted from the diurnal variation of wind stress