|Copyright||2009 American Geophysical Union|
|Author(s)||Ardhuin Fabrice1, Chapron Bertrand2, Collard Fabrice3|
|Affiliation(s)||1 : Serv Hydrog & Oceanog Marine, F-29609 Brest, France.
2 : IFREMER, Ctr Brest, Lab Oceanog Spatiale, F-29280 Plouzane, France.
3 : Collecte Localisat Satellites, Div Radar, F-29280 Plouzane, France.
|Source||Geophysical Research Letters ( GRL ) (0094-8276) (American Geophysical Union), 2009-03 , Vol. 36 , N. L06607 , P. 1-5|
|WOS© Times Cited||124|
|Abstract||Global observations of ocean swell, from satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar data, are used to estimate the dissipation of swell energy for a number of storms. Swells can be very persistent with energy e-folding scales exceeding 20,000 km. For increasing swell steepness this scale shrinks systematically, down to 2800 km for the steepest observed swells, revealing a significant loss of swell energy. This value corresponds to a normalized energy decay in time beta = 4.2 x 10(-6) s(-1). Many processes may be responsible for this dissipation. The increase of dissipation rate in dissipation with swell steepness is interpreted as a laminar to turbulent transition of the boundary layer, with a threshold Reynolds number of the order of 100,000. These observations of swell evolution open the way for more accurate wave forecasting models, and provide a constraint on swell-induced air-sea fluxes of momentum and energy. Citation: Ardhuin, F., B. Chapron, and F. Collard (2009), Observation of swell dissipation across oceans, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L06607, doi: 10.1029/2008GL037030.|
Ardhuin Fabrice, Chapron Bertrand, Collard Fabrice (2009). Observation of swell dissipation across oceans. Geophysical Research Letters ( GRL ), 36(L06607), 1-5. Publisher's official version : http://doi.org/10.1029/2008GL037030 , Open Access version : http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00000/6452/