Observation of swell dissipation across oceans

Ardhuin, Fabrice; Chapron, Bertrand; Collard, Fabrice

doi:10.1029/2008gl037030

Cited by 286 publications

(294 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Waves that propagate away from their generation area and no longer receive energy input from the local wind are called swell. Swell waves can travel long distances across the ocean, up to 20,000 km, half of the Earth's perimeter [1][2][3][4]. Since swells can propagate such long distances, the wave field is, most of the times, the result of contributions from waves with different frequencies (periods) and incoming directions: wind seas, and young and old swell waves, reflecting different origins and ages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonal Variability of Wind Sea and Swell Waves Climate along the Canary Current: The Local Wind Effect

Semedo

2018

JMSE

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A climatology of wind sea and swell waves along the Canary eastern boundary current area, from west Iberia to Mauritania, is presented. The study is based on the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis ERA-Interim. The wind regime along the Canary Current, along west Iberia and north-west Africa, varies significantly from winter to summer. High summer wind speeds generate high wind sea waves, particularly along the coasts of Morocco and Western Sahara. Lower winter wind speeds, along with stronger extratropical storms crossing the North Atlantic sub-basin up north lead to a predominance of swell waves in the area during from December to February. In summer, the coast parallel wind interacts with the coastal headlands, increasing the wind speed and the locally generated waves. The spatial patterns of the wind sea or swell regional wave fields are shown to be different from the open ocean, due to coastal geometry, fetch dimensions, and island sheltering.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonal Variability of Wind Sea and Swell Waves Climate along the Canary Current: The Local Wind Effect

Semedo

2018

JMSE

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“…Young and Babanin (2006) arrived at a similar conclusion and also proposed a cumulative source term. Observations of swell dissipation over long distances resulted in a separate dissipation term for swell associated with turbulence (Ardhuin et al 2009) in the upper layer of the ocean. Significant progress was made by Ardhuin et al (2010) who combined the effects of local saturation (but scaled with the absolute excess of wave variance), cumulative effects and a separate swell dissipation term.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Source term balance in a severe storm in the Southern North Sea

Vledder

Hulst²,

McConochie

2016

Ocean Dynamics

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This paper presents the results of a wave hindcast of a severe storm in the Southern North Sea to verify recently developed deep and shallow water source terms. The work was carried out in the framework of the ONR funded NOPP project (Tolman et al. 2013) in which deep and shallow water source terms were developed for use in third-generation wave prediction models. These deep water source terms for whitecapping, wind input and nonlinear interactions were developed, implemented and tested primarily in the WAVEWATCH III model, whereas shallow water source terms for depth-limited wave breaking and triad interactions were developed, implemented and tested primarily in the SWAN wave model. So far, the new deepwater source terms for whitecapping were not fully tested in shallow environments. Similarly, the shallow water source terms were not yet tested in large inter-mediate depth areas Shell Global Solutions International B.V, Rijswijk, The Netherlands like the North Sea. As a first step in assessing the performance of these newly developed source terms, the source term balance and the effect of different physical settings on the prediction of wave heights and wave periods in the relatively shallow North Sea was analysed. The December 2013 storm was hindcast with a SWAN model implementation for the North Sea. Spectral wave boundary conditions were obtained from an Atlantic Ocean WAVEWATCH III model implementation and the model was driven by hourly CFSR wind fields. In the southern part of the North Sea, current and water level effects were included. The hindcast was performed with five different settings for whitecapping, viz. three Komen type whitecapping formulations, the saturation-based whitecapping by Van der Westhuysen et al. (2007) and the recently developed ST6 whitecapping as described by Zieger et al. (2015). Results of the wave hindcast were compared with buoy measurements at location K13 collected by the Dutch Ministry of Transport and Public Works. An analysis was made of the source term balance at three locations, the deep water location North Cormorant, the inter-mediate depth location K13 and at location Wielingen, a shallow water location close to the Dutch coast. The results indicate that at deep water the source terms for wind input, whitecapping and nonlinear four-wave interactions are of the same magnitude. At the inter-mediate depth location K13, bottom friction plays a significant role, whereas at the shallow water location Wielingen also depth-limited wave breaking becomes important.

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“…(7), β capil is the damping term of capillary waves due to the viscosity of water, and is taken from Lamb (1932) as β capil = −4 ν w k 2 , where ν w = 1.3 × 10 −6 m 2 s −1 is the kinematic viscosity of water. According to Dore (1978), however, the viscosity of the air gives a stronger dissipation for wavelength larger than 0.85 m. Swell dissipation was observed by Tolman (2002) and Ardhuin et al (2009), who found it to be consistent with the effects of friction with the atmosphere. The term β swell in Eq.…”

Section: Viscous Damping Termmentioning

confidence: 57%

“…where c g is wave group velocity, (∂F /∂t) w represents the wind input term, (∂F /∂t) visc accounts for the damping of capillary waves due to water viscosity, and also includes a swell dissipation term related to friction with the atmosphere, as reported by several studies (Tolman, 2002;Ardhuin et al, 2009), as will be discussed below. The other terms of the right-hand side of Eq.…”

Section: Spectral Evolution Equations Integrated Over Wavenumbermentioning

confidence: 99%

Imbalance of energy and momentum source terms of the sea wave transfer equation for fully developed seas

Caudal

2012

Ocean Sci.

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Abstract. In the concept of full development, the sea wave spectrum is regarded as a nearly stationary solution of the wave transfer equation, where source and sink terms should be in balance with respect to both energy and momentum. Using a two-dimensional empirical sea wave spectral model at full development, this paper performs an assessment of the compatibility of the energy and momentum budgets of sea waves over the whole spectral range. Among the various combinations of model functions for wave breaking and wind source terms tested, not one is found to fulfill simultaneously the energy and momentum balance of the transfer equation. Based on experimental and theoretical grounds, wave breaking is known to contribute to frequency downshift of a narrow-banded wave spectrum when the modulational instability is combined with wave breaking. On those grounds, it is assumed that, in addition to dissipation, wave breaking produces a spectral energy flux directed toward low wavenumbers. I show that it is then possible to remove the energy and momentum budget inconsistency, and correspondingly the required strength of this spectral flux is estimated. Introducing such a downward spectral flux permits fulfilling both energy and momentum balance conditions. Meanwhile, the consistency between the transfer equation and empirical spectra, estimated by means of a cost function K, is either improved or slightly reduced, depending upon the wave breaking and wind source terms chosen. Other tests are performed in which it is further assumed that wave breaking would also be associated with azimuthal diffusion of the spectral energy. This would correspondingly reduce the required downward spectral flux by a factor of up to 5, although it would not be able to remove it entirely.

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Observation of swell dissipation across oceans

Cited by 286 publications

References 24 publications

Seasonal Variability of Wind Sea and Swell Waves Climate along the Canary Current: The Local Wind Effect

Seasonal Variability of Wind Sea and Swell Waves Climate along the Canary Current: The Local Wind Effect

Source term balance in a severe storm in the Southern North Sea

Imbalance of energy and momentum source terms of the sea wave transfer equation for fully developed seas

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