Latent heat fluxes in the hurricane boundary layer

As part of the recent ONR-sponsored "Coupled Boundary Layers Air-Sea Transfer" (CBLAST) Defense Research Initiative, a NOAA P3 Hurricane Hunter aircraft was instrumented to carry out direct turbulent flux measurements in the high wind boundary layer of a hurricane. During the 2003 field season flux measurements were made within Hurricanes Fabian and Isabel. We report here the first direct measurements of latent heat flux measured in the hurricane boundary layer. The previous wind speed range for humidity fluxes and Dalton numbers has been extended by over 50%. Up to 32 m/s, the highest 10m winds measured, the Dalton number is not significantly different from that found during HEXOS, with no evidence of an increase with wind speed.