Studies on physical processes at the sea surface

I feel greatly honoured to be awarded the Oceanographical Society of Japan Prize for 1989, and to be given this opportunity to look back at my past activities in research and education, and to present them as an example for younger members of our Society. Taking this opportunity, I acknowledge with sincere thanks many persons who guided me or who have collaborated with me since I was a young student up to the present.My past academic history may be divided into three periods. In the first period (1955–71) at Kyoto University which included and eighteen month visit to the University of Chicago, I studied the production of air bubbles and droplets at the sea surface by wind-wave breaking, and the supply and distribution of the sea-salt particles from the sea to the atmosphere. The first nondimensional formulation of the form of single air bubbles floating at liquid surfaces was also presented. In the second period (1971–1981) I pursued, at the new Physical Oceanography Laboratory of Tohoku University, the concept of wind waves which are coupled with the wind. I proposed the 3/2-power law of wind waves and the high frequency part of the wind-wave spectral form which is proportional to the friction velocity of air and to the –4th power of frequency. Detailed investigations of wind-wave phenomena were also performed in wind-wave tunnels by introducing quantitative flow visualization techniques and together with my students, we elucidated ordered motions in the flows below and above wind waves. The Tohoku Wave Model was also developed in which the similarity laws of wind waves, which are strongly coupled with the air flow, were explicitly used. In the third period (1982-present), my area of interest has become broader and, togerther with my students and my overseas collaboratos, we are studying the connection of local physical processes at the air-sea boundary with studies of larger scale ocean-atmosphere interactions. One aspect of this has led to the organization of the Ocean Mixed Layer Experiment (OMLET, 1987–91), as part of the Japanese national programmes of the World Climate Research Programme. Another interest is the ongoing fundamental study of the use of satellite data for the estimation of air-sea fluxes over a broad area. Pursuit of the roots of the similarity laws of the windsea remains one of my present tasks.