Meteorological and Wave Measurements from a Stable Research Platform at Sea

The broad scientific goal of this effort is to advance our understanding of the sea surface wave dynamics and propagation and to develop capability for short-term wave forecasting based on onboard radar observation. An essential element in such effort is to describe and quantify the physical factors primarily responsible for the wave evolution. The wave dynamics on the water side has already been reduced to a computationally-intensive numerical problem (Friehe et al., 2007, section III.B), the complexity of which is determined by the number of nonlinearly interacting wave modes. The wind driving of the waves on the other hand, considered to introduce a wave amplitude growth of the order of a percent per period for physically meaningful wave ages, is less understood. The traditional approach of encapsulating the complex physics of ocean-atmosphere interaction into exchange coefficients (e.g. drag coefficient), is unsuitable for phase-resolving forecasts, hence the need for a mechanistic description of the wind input. Such description is now hindered by gaps in theoretical knowledge and in techniques for numerical modeling. Specifically, the observational validation for most of the wind-wave interaction mechanisms proposed so far in theoretical works is lacking. Little is yet known on how to incorporate realistic multi-mode wave fields in models of air flow over waves or what is the proper SGS parameterization for the air flow LES. The goal in this effort is to deliver progress on these open issues.