Articles | Volume 12, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-12-1011-2005
© Author(s) 2005. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.14 Dec 2005
14 Dec 2005
Theoretical interpretation of fetch limited wind-drivensea observations
Abstract. We show that the results of major fetch limited field studies of wind-generated surface gravity waves on deep water can be explained in the framework of simple analytical model. The spectra measured in these experiments are described by self-similar solutions of ``conservative" Hasselmann equation that includes only advective and nonlinear interaction terms. Interaction with the wind and dissipation due to the wave breaking indirectly defines parameters of the self-similar solutions.