E. B. Kraus’s research while affiliated with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and other places

A statistical analysis of wind, air, dew-point and sea-temperature records from all nine weather ships in the North Atlantic shows local variations between years which are highly significant when compared with variations within months. The fluctuations show a consistent pattern with a scale of more than 500 miles in the atmosphere and a persistence over several months. The horizontal extent of sea-surface temperature anomalies appears to be somewhat smaller, but they tend to last longer than air-temperature anomalies. Short-period variations in the flux of latent and sensible heat are due predominantly to atmospheric variations, particularly in winter. The effect of sea-surface temperature anomalies is somewhat greater in summer, though it becomes significant only on the annual time scale.