Oceanic whitecap coverage measured during UK-SOLAS cruises

The breaking of wind-generated waves plays asignificant role in the exchanges of momentum, heat,water vapour, and gas between the atmosphere and theocean. Breaking waves entrain air into the surface waterforming bubbles, which manifests itself as a whitecap onthe ocean surface. Whitecap measurements in the openocean are sparse and are limited to Monahan andMuircheartaigh, (1980), the warm and moderate seasdata sets of Bortovskii, (1987), Stramska and Petelski,(2003), and Callaghan et al. (2008a). During the UKfunded SOLAS cruises extensive measurements of thewhitecap coverage in the North Atlantic and NorwegianSea were made. Initial whitecap measurements fromthese cruises will be presented