Observation and estimation of Lagrangian, Stokes and Eulerian currents induced by wind and waves at the sea surface

By Fabrice Ardhuin, L. Marié, Nicolas Rascle, P. Forget, A. Roland. 2008

275 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The surface current response to winds is analyzed in a 2-yr time series of a 12-MHz (HF) Wellen Radar (WERA) off the west coast of France. Consistent with previous observations, the measured currents, after filtering tides, are on the order of 1.0%–1.8% of the wind speed, in a direction 10°–40° to the right of the wind, and with systematic trends as a function of wind speed. This Lagrangian current can be decomposed as the vector sum of a quasi-Eulerian current UE, representative of the top 1 m of the water column and part of the wave-induced Stokes drift Uss at the sea surface. Here, Uss is estimated with an accurate numerical wave model using a novel parameterization of wave dissipation processes. Using both observed and modeled wave spectra, Uss is found to be very well approximated by a simple function of the wind speed and significant wave height, generally increasing quadratically with the wind speed. Focusing on a site located 100 km from the mainland, the wave-induced contribution of Uss ...

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/27d06c14663fa5003872cf9ccdae49ebfeb4a75b

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Citations in the corpus

Ocean wave sources of seismic noise (2011, unknown): “8 of 21 wave trains of frequency 0.05 Hz from two distinct storms (class III) is a rare source of seismic noise at fs = 0.1 Hz, even though low‐frequency swells can propagate to longer distances with minimal energy loss [Ardhuin et al., 2009].”
A global wave parameter database for geophysical applications. Part 2: Model validation with improved source term parameterization (2013, background): “A non-linear swell dissipation based on SAR-derived dissipation rates across the Pacific (Ardhuin et al., 2009).”
The physical oceanography of the transport of floating marine debris (2020, background): “From an observational perspective, Stokes drift can be inferred from high-frequency radar (Ardhuin et al 2009b) and has the potential to be estimated from satellite measurements (Ardhuin et al 2019).”
Observation of swell dissipation across oceans (2008, background): “The present observations and analysis opens the way for a better understanding of air-sea fluxes in low wind conditions, and more accurate hindcasts and forecasts of sea states [see Ardhuin et al., 2008, 2009, and e.g.”
Monitoring and analysis of ocean swell fields from space: New methods for routine observations (2009, methodology): “These results have also been applied to improve wave forecasting models [Ardhuin et al., 2008, 2009b; Bidlot, 2008].”
Small-scale open-ocean currents have large effects on wind-wave heights (2017, background): “This is the case of the surface Stokes drift Uss, which is almost proportional to m3 [Ardhuin et al., 2009], or the mean square slope (mss), proportional to m4.”