During the past decade, man's centuries-old interest in marine me-
teorology and oceanography has broadened. Ocean and atmosphere are now
treated as coupled parts of one system; the resulting interest in
air-sea interaction problems has led to a rapid growth in the
sophistication of instruments and measurement techniques. This book has
been designed as a reference text which describes, albng with the
instruments themselves, the accumulated practical experi- ence of
experts engaged in field observations of air-sea interac- tions. It is
meant to supplement rather than replace manuals on standard routine
observations or instnunentation handbooks. At the inception a textbook
was planned, which would contain only well tested methods and
instruments. It was quickly discovered that for the book to be useful
many devices and techniques would have to be included which are still
evolving rapidly. The reader is therefore cautioned to take nothing in
these pages for granted. Certainly, every contributor is an expert, but
while some are back- ed up by generations of published work, others are
pioneers. The choice of topics, of course, is debatable. The types of
observa- tions included are not exhaustive and topics such as marine
aero- sols and radio-tracers are omitted, as was the general subject of
remote sensing, which was felt to be too broad and evol ving too
rapidly. The guideline adopted in limiting size was maximum use- fulness
to 'a trained experimentalist new to the field'.
