Surface heat loss from cooling ponds

A technique is developed for accounting for the contribution of free convection to the evaporation from a cooling pond. Established formulas for forced (wind‐driven) evaporation are corrected for convective effects and used in a formula for surface energy balance to estimate heat fluxes and surface temperatures of cooling ponds. The resulting expression for total heat loss agrees with observed cooling pond performance better than other formulas presently in use. Surface heat loss coefficients may be derived from the new heat loss formula for use in calculating temperature rises induced by heated discharges.