Surface Wave Processes on the Continental Shelf and Beach

Wind waves and swell dominate the hydrodynamic and sediment transport processes on many continental shelves and beaches, drive near shore circulation and morphology, and play an important role in remote sensing. Accurate wave prediction in coastal environments is a daunting challenge because waves a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Herbers, Thomas H, Janssen, Tim T, Guza, Robert T, O'Reilly, William C
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
AIR WATER INTERACTIONS
BEACHES
BOTTOM FRICTION
BOUNDARY LAYER
COASTAL REGIONS
CONTINENTAL SHELVES
DIFFRACTION
FIELD TESTS
Fluid Mechanics
HYDRODYNAMICS
MARINE GEOPHYSICS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
Meteorology
MUD
MUDDY CONTINENTAL SHELVES
NONLINEAR WAVES
OCEAN BOTTOM SOILS
OCEAN BOTTOM TOPOGRAPHY
OCEAN CURRENTS
OCEAN WAVES
Physical and Dynamic Oceanography
PREDICTIONS
REFRACTION
SAND
SANDY CONTINENTAL SHELVES
SCATTERING
SEAFLOOR DAMPING EFFECTS
SURFACE WAVES
SUSPENDED SEDIMENTS
SWELL DECAY
TIDAL CURRENTS
WAVE ATTENUATION
WAVE BREAKING
WAVE DECAY
WAVE ENERGY
WAVE PREDICTION MODELS
WAVE-BOTTOM INTERACTIONS
WAVE-MUD INTERACTION
WAVE-WAVE INTERACTIONS
WIND
WIND WAVES
Online Access:Request full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Wind waves and swell dominate the hydrodynamic and sediment transport processes on many continental shelves and beaches, drive near shore circulation and morphology, and play an important role in remote sensing. Accurate wave prediction in coastal environments is a daunting challenge because waves are affected by many physical processes, including scattering by seafloor topography, wave-current interactions, nonlinear effects, wave breaking, and friction in the bottom boundary layer. Several of these processes are poorly understood and existing wave prediction models rely on parameterizations and empirical calibration to represent them. The long-term goals of this research are to obtain a better understanding of the physical processes that affect ocean surface waves in the coastal environment and develop improved wave prediction capability. The specific objectives of this study are as follows: (1) observe and predict the seafloor damping effects on ocean surface waves in sandy and muddy coastal environments, (2) advance deterministic and stochastic modeling capability for nonlinear wave evolution in coastal regions with complex seafloor topography and/or strong currents, (3) improve the representation of source terms in operational wave prediction models, and (4) predict the nonlinear shoaling transformation of waves on beaches. By combining theoretical advances with numerical models and field observations, we investigate the physical processes that affect ocean surface waves on continental shelves and beaches. The transformation of wave spectra is predicted with models that include the effects of refraction, scattering by wave-wave and wave-bottom interactions, parameterizations of bottom friction, and wave breaking. Extensive field data sets were collected in ONR experiments off North Carolina, California, and the Florida Gulf coast. Recently, we conducted additional experiments on the sandy Martha's Vineyard shelf and the muddy Louisiana shelf. Additional contract numbers include N00014-07-1-0365, N00014-07-1-0402, and N00014-09-1-0363.