Small‐Scale Spatial Variations of Air‐Sea Heat, Moisture, and Buoyancy Fluxes in the Tropical Trade Winds Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans

Observations from two autonomous Wave Gliders and six Lagrangian Surface Wave Instrument Float with Tracking drifters in the northwestern tropical Atlantic during the January–February 2020 NOAA Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC) are used to evaluate the spatial variability of bulk air-sea heat, moisture, and buoyancy fluxes. Sea surface temperature (SST) gradients up to 0.7°C across 10–100 km frequently persisted for several days. SST gradients were a leading cause of systematic spatial air-sea sensible heat flux gradients, as variations over 5 Wm −2 across under 20 km were observed. Wind speed gradients played no significant role and air temperature adjustments to SST Grant no. NA19OAR4310374