Abstract
Observational data on air-sea boundary processes at the Shirahama Oceanographic Tower Station, Kyoto University, obtained in November, 1969, was analyzed and presented as an example representing the structure of growing wind-wave field. The condition was an ideal onshore wind, and the data contained continuous records of the wind speed at four heights, the wind direction, the air and water temperatures, the tides, and the growing wind waves, for more than six hours. The main results are as follows. Firstly, in both of the wind speed and the sea surface wind stress, rather conspicuous variations of about six-minute period were appreciable. Secondly, the three-seconds power law and its lemma expressed byH *=BT *3/2 andδ=2πBT *−1/2, respectively, are very well supported by the data, whereH *(≡gH/u * 2) andT *(≡gT/u *) are the dimensionless significant wave height and period, respectively,δ the wave steepness,u * the friction velocity of air,g the acceleration of gravity, andB=0.062 is a universal constant. Thirdly, the spectral form for the high-frequency side of the spectral maximum is well expressed by the form ofΦ(σ)=α sgu*σ−4, whereσ is the angular frequency andΦ(σ) the spectral density. The value ofα s is determined as 0.062±0.010 from the observational data. There is a conspicuous discrepancy between the spectral shape of wind waves obtained in wind-wave tunnels and those in the sea, the former containing well-defined higher harmonics of the spectral peak, and consequently there is an apparent difference in the values ofα s also. However, it is shown that the discrepancy ofσ s may be eliminated by evaluating properly the energy level of the spectral form containing higher harmonics.
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Kawai, S., Okada, K. & Toba, Y. Field data support of three-seconds power law andgu *σ−4-spectral form for growing wind waves. Journal of the Oceanographical Society of Japan 33, 137–150 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02109685
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02109685