Free-surface adjustment and topographic waves in coastal currents

Surface Waves on Veritcally Sheared Currents

A new perturbation analysis is presented which provides a first approximation to the wave-current interaction. The model is shown to provide a good description of laboratory data provided by Swan, Cummins & James (2000) and of results from a numerical formulation. These comparisons confirm that the near-surface vorticity leads to an important modification of the dispersion relation. The results...

An improved, free surface, topographic technique

Current techniques of water wave visualisation such as shadowgraphy and stereophotography are widely used but are deficient in many aspects. Refraction based visualisation observes the bending of light as it traverses across a water wave -air interface. This work describes the continued development of techniques to measure the surface height of a liquid free surface. The method utilizes refract...

Dynamics of Winds and Currents Coupled to Surface Waves

We discuss the coupling processes between surface gravity waves and adjacent winds and currents in turbulent boundary layers. These processes mediate exchanges of momentum, heat, and gases between the atmosphere and ocean and thus are of global significance for climate. Surface waves grow primarily by pressure-form stress from airflow over the waveforms, and they dissipate in the open sea by wa...

Kavleigh Waves and Free Surface Reflections ♦

Microwave Measurements of Winds, Waves, and Currents in the Global and Coastal Ocean

APPROACH Our approach has been multifaceted. First, we have been utilizing data collected during the SAXON-FPN experiment to extract as much information as possible about microwave scattering from the sea surface and about the imaging of the sea surface by synthetic aperture radars (SAR). Second, we have adapted new techniques for obtaining wind, wave, and current information at sea, which we d...