GLOSSARY dispersive: Characteristic of waves whose velocity of propagation depends on wave frequency. The shape of a dispersive wave packet changes as it moves along. eigenfunction: Functional shape of the horizontal and vertical components of wave motion versus depth in the ocean for a specific wave frequency. geometrical spreading: Process of amplitude reduction resulting from the progressive...

AbstractIn the present paper the problem of propagation of Rayleigh waves due to a finite rigid barrier in a shallow ocean has been analyzed. The reflected, transmitted and scattered waves have been obtained by fourier transformation and Wiener-Hopf technique. Numerical computations for the amplitude of the scattered and the reflected waves have been made versus the wave number. It has been don...

Experimental and theoretical studies of low-frequency, long-range sound propagation through a fluctuating ocean are important for many practical problems, e.g. source detection and ranging, communication, and acoustic tomography. The coherence of low-frequency sound waves propagating over megameter distances diminishes noticeably due to sound scattering by internal gravity waves. As a result, t...

It is well-known that internal waves can propagate downwards in the interior of the oceanic (e.g. Gill, 1982) and this process has been studied experimentally in the laboratory (e.g. Stevens and Imberger, 1994). Moreover, it is well-known that a monochromatic internal wave is an exact solution of the fully nonlinear Euler equations for a stratified fluid (in the Boussinesq approximation) with a...

The session on “Extreme and Rogue Waves” has been proposed and successfully run for ten years by the Natural Hazard Division of the European Geosciences Union, previously known as the European Geophysical Society. Proceedings of the session were published by Pelinovsky and Kharif (2006, 2008), Kharif et al. (2006) and Pelinovsky et al. (2009). Progresses in this field are further documented by ...

The Lombok Strait separates the Indonesian islands Bali and Lombok and is the second most important strait through which water is exchanged between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. The south end of the Lombok Strait is split by a small island and on each side of the island are rugged sills with an average depth of about 200 m. On the sill, tidal current speeds up to ±3.5 m/s are encounte...

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in problems of diffraction and radiation of ocean waves around structures, in relation to “green” power generation by Oscillating Water Column (OWC) devices. In this paper we present a first-order analytical solution for the diffraction of ocean waves around a hollow cylindrical shell structure suspended in an ocean of finite depth. By revisiting...

Oscillating wind with a period P induce variability with the following characteristics in the upper few hundred meters of the equatorial zone (5øN to 5øS) of the ocean. (1) P < 10 days: these winds fluctuate too rapidly to generate strong currents and excite primarily waves. (2) 10 days < P < 50 days: At these periods the winds generate intense equatorial jets in the upper 50 m, but at greater ...

In this study, we analyze the refraction of long oceanic waves at the Gulf Stream’s north wall off the Florida coast as observed in imagery obtained from the RADARSAT-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) during the passage of Hurricane Bonnie on August 25, 1998. The wave spectra are derived from RADARSAT-1 SAR images from both inside and outside the Gulf Stream. From the image spectra, we can deter...

66 “It came from nowhere, snapping giant ships in two. No one believed the survivors ... until now” screamed the cover of New Scientist magazine on 30 June 2001, introducing an article entitled “Monsters of the Deep.” The power and danger suggested by the term “rogue” to describe extreme ocean waves add to the public fascination with these waves. They also presented important and challenging sc...