  Modern day studies of wind-driven sea waves are usually focused on wind
forcing rather than on the effect of resonant nonlinear wave interactions. The
authors assume that these effects are dominating and propose a simple
relationship between instant wave steepness and time or fetch of wave
development expressed in wave periods or lengths. This law does not contain
wind speed explicitly and relies upon this asymptotic theory. The validity of
this law is illustrated by results of numerical simulations, in situ
measurements of growing wind seas and wind wave tank experiments. The impact of
the new vision of sea wave physics is discussed in the context of conventional
approaches to wave modeling and forecasting.
