Measurements of Velocity Fields Under Breaking Waves

Laboratory Measurements of Three-Dimensional Breaking Waves

Laboratory experiments were used to explore the influence of spatial focusing and diffraction on the evolution of unsteady, three-dimensional, deep-water wave-packets with a constant-steepness spectrum. The wave-packets were generated by thirteen independently programmed paddles and evolved to breaking near the midpoint of a 4m x 11 m test section. Detailed measurements of surface displacements...

Radiometric Measurements of the Microwave Emissivity of Reproducible Breaking Waves

In a recent experiment the microwave emissivity of foam on calm water was measured to be 0.75 to 0.95 and dependent on polarization [1]. Microwave radiometric measurements of breaking waves on the open ocean showed that the emission due to wave breaking varies with the time dynamics of the wave, as well as with radiometer polarization and viewing angle [2]. However, the inherent intermittency a...

Comment on Enhanced TKE Dissipation under Breaking Waves

It is noted that the results of recent experiments on the enhancement of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) dissipation below surface waves can be stated as follows. TKE dissipation is enhanced by a factor 15Hws/z at depths 0.5Hws < z < 20Hws with respect to the wall-layer result ǫ = u ∗w/κz, where u∗w is the friction velocity in water and Hws is the significant windsea wave height. For open ocean ...

Biased Estimates of Ω from Comparing Smoothed Predicted Velocity Fields to Unsmoothed Peculiar Velocity Measurements

We show that a regression of unsmoothed peculiar velocity measurements against peculiar velocities predicted from a smoothed galaxy density field leads to a biased estimate of the cosmological density parameter Ω, even when galaxies trace the underlying mass distribution and galaxy positions and velocities are known perfectly. The bias arises because the errors in the predicted velocities are c...

Breaking Wave Velocity Estimation