Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Breaking swell waves at Hermosa Beach, California. A swell, also sometimes referred to as ground swell, in the context of an ocean, sea or lake, is a series of mechanical waves that propagate along the interface between water and air under the predominating influence of gravity, and thus are often referred to as surface gravity waves.
Wind-wave dissipation or "swell dissipation" is process in which a wave generated via a weather system loses its mechanical energy transferred from the atmosphere via wind. Wind waves, as their name suggests, are generated by wind transferring energy from the atmosphere to the ocean's surface, capillary gravity waves play an essential role in ...
In fluid dynamics, wind wave modeling describes the effort to depict the sea state and predict the evolution of the energy of wind waves using numerical techniques.These simulations consider atmospheric wind forcing, nonlinear wave interactions, and frictional dissipation, and they output statistics describing wave heights, periods, and propagation directions for regional seas or global oceans.
In fluid dynamics, a wind wave, or wind-generated water wave, is a surface wave that occurs on the free surface of bodies of water as a result of the wind blowing over the water's surface. The contact distance in the direction of the wind is known as the fetch. Waves in the oceans can travel thousands of kilometers before reaching land.
In fluid dynamics and nautical terminology, a breaking wave or breaker is a wave with enough energy to "break" at its peak, reaching a critical level at which linear energy transforms into wave turbulence energy with a distinct forward curve. At this point, simple physical models that describe wave dynamics often become invalid, particularly ...
For example, warm currents traveling along more temperate coasts increase the temperature of the area by warming the sea breezes that blow over them. Perhaps the most striking example is the Gulf Stream , which, together with its extension the North Atlantic Drift , makes northwest Europe much more temperate for its high latitude than other ...
Two main processes can explain the transfer of energy from the short wind waves to the long infragravity waves, and both are important in shallow water and for steep wind waves. The most common process is the subharmonic interaction of trains of wind waves which was first observed by Munk and Tucker and explained by Longuet-Higgins and Stewart. [5]
In oceanography, sea state is the general condition of the free surface on a large body of water—with respect to wind waves and swell—at a certain location and moment. A sea state is characterized by statistics, including the wave height, period, and spectrum. The sea state varies with time, as the wind and swell conditions change.