Near-Surface Turbulence in the Presence of Breaking Waves

By Johannes Gemmrich, D. Farmer. 2004

196 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Observations with a three-axis pulse-to-pulse coherent acoustic Doppler profiler and acoustic resonators reveal the turbulence and bubble field beneath breaking waves in the open ocean at wind speeds up to 14 m s−1. About 55%–80% of velocity wavenumber spectra, calculated with Hilbert spectral analysis based on empirical mode decomposition, are consistent with an inertial subrange. Time series of turbulent kinetic energy dissipation at approximately 1 m beneath the free surface and 1-Hz sampling rate are obtained. High turbulence levels with dissipation rates more than four orders larger than the background dissipation are linked to wave breaking. Initial dissipation levels beneath breaking waves yield the Hinze scale of the maximum bubble size aH ≅ 2 × 10−3 m. Turbulence induced by discrete breaking events was observed to decay as e ∝ tn, where n = −4.3 is close to the theoretical value for isotropic turbulence (−17/4). In the crest region above the mean waterline, dissipation increases as e(z) ...

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7420cf827d1026c272dcfbfb21d904814a8802e5

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Citations in the corpus

Wave Breaking Dissipation Observed with “SWIFT” Drifters (2012, background): “Field observations of deep water breaking (i.e., whitecaps) have shown that the turbulent dissipation rate is a function of wave steepness and is correlated with wind stress (Terray et al. 1996; Gemmrich and Farmer 1999, 2004; Gerbi et al. 2009; Thomson et al. 2009; Gemmrich 2010).”
Wave breaking onset and strength for two-dimensional deep-water wave groups (2007, background): “Consequences of breaking in the upper ocean surface layer include greatly enhanced turbulence dissipation rates in the near-surface region (e.g. Terray et al. 1996; Gemmrich & Farmer 2004).”
On the Existence of Water Turbulence Induced by Nonbreaking Surface Waves (2009, background): “In contrast, the notion of a nonbreaking wave-induced turbulence is a new concept, although it has been foreshadowed in a number of experimental (Yefimov and Khristoforov 1971; Cavaleri and Zecchetto 1987; Gemmrich and Farmer 2004; Babanin et al. 2005; Gemmrich 2009, manuscript submitted to J. Phys.”
Spectral Distribution of Energy Dissipation of Wind-Generated Waves due to Dominant Wave Breaking (2006, background): “Recent refined studies of Soloviev and Lukas (2003) and Gemmrich and Farmer (2004) confirmed the existence of enhanced near-surface turbulence due to breaking, but pointed out that the scaling H of the constant-dissipation level is still an issue.”
A review on Hilbert‐Huang transform: Method and its applications to geophysical studies (2008, methodology): “HHT has been used to study such phenomena from freak waves [Wu and Yao, 2004] to breaking, bubble generation, and turbulence energy dissipation [Banner et al., 2002; Gemmrich and Farmer, 2004; Vagle et al., 2005].”
Observational and numerical modeling methods for quantifying coastal ocean turbulence and mixing (2008, background): “With recent advances in sonar technology it is now possible to resolve instantaneous velocity profiles at spatial (O(10 2 m)) and temporal (O(10 1 s)) scales suitable for turbulence measurements (Veron and Melville, 1999; Gemmrich and Farmer, 2004).”
A global wave parameter database for geophysical applications. Part 1: Wave-current turbulence interaction parameters for the open ocean based on traditional parameterizations (2008, methodology): “One should be aware of a remaining discrepancy with the data of Gemmrich and Farmer (2004) who rather suggest z0/Hs ’ 0.25. The difference in these estimates is possibly due to variations in the method of averaging, Eulerian in the case of Terray et al. (1996), and surface following in the case of G”
Spectrally Resolved Energy Dissipation Rate and Momentum Flux of Breaking Waves (2008, methodology): “Observations of the surface wave field were taken during 24 September–10 October 2000 as part of the Fluxes, Air–Sea Interaction and Remote Sensing (FAIRS) experiment aboard Research Platform FLIP in the open ocean 150 km offshore of the central Californian coast (Gemmrich and Farmer 2004).”