En ergy Com po nents over the South China Sea in Sum mers of 2004 and 2006 Yung -

Mea sure ments of me te o ro log i cal vari ables and sur face en ergy com po nents over the South China Sea (SCS) are com pared with the NCEP-DOE AMIP-II reanalysis (NCEP2). The ob ser va tions were con ducted on a re search ves sel in the sum mers of 2004 and 2006. In ad di tion, a one-col umn ocean model is used to sim u late sur face en ergy com po nents and up per-level wa ter tem per a tures (at 4 and 10 m depths). The sim u lated up per-level wa ter tem per a tures agree well with the ob ser va tions dur ing the two cruises (OR1-728, OR1-802) with a root-mean-square dif fer ence (RMSD) smaller than 0.4 K. The ob ser va tions and the sim u la tions show that the so lar ra di a tion (with a mean of ~200 W m) is stron ger than the la tent heat flux (~160 W m), and the la tent heat flux is stron ger than the sen si ble heat flux (~10 W m) dur ing both pe ri ods. None the less, the mag ni tude of vari abil ity in heat flux caused by the spo radic wind is not seen in the reanalysis, it ap pears in the tur bu lent heat flux sim u lated by the model. The ma jor dif fer ences be tween the model es ti mate and the NCEP2 reanalysis are the value of emissivity and the in clu sion of di ur nal cy cles in key vari ables, with the value of NCEP2 for emissivity as 1. The emissivity of this part of ocean is observed to be 0.96 with albedo at 0.07.