89th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

Wednesday, 14 January 2009: 10:30 AM
A Two-Scale Approximation for Nonlinear Energy Transfers in Wave Spectra
Room 128A (Phoenix Convention Center)
Will Perrie, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, NS, Canada; and D. T. Resio
Poster PDF (30.5 kB)
We recently derived and presented a new method for estimating the transfer rates in wind wave, based on a two-scale approximation (TSA) to the full Boltzman integral (FBI) for quadruplet wave-wave interactions. In that presentation, the TSA method was tested for idealized spectral data. In this paper, we focus on observed wave spectral from field measurements. Comparisons are given of TSA, the full Boltzman integral, FBI, and the Discrete Interaction Approximation (DIA) which is presently used in almost all operational wave forecast models, using data collected in Currituck Sound, and in open ocean conditions. The latter data include directional waverider observations off the Field Research Facility at Duck North Carolina during hurricane Wilma in 2005. These comparisons show that TSA compares favorably with FBI, and that it is a notable improvement over the DIA.

Supplementary URL: