Short wind waves on the ocean: Wavenumber-frequency spectra

Abstract

Dominant surface waves on the ocean exhibit a dispersion relation that confines their energy to a curve in a wavenumber-frequency spectrum. Short wind waves on the ocean, on the other hand, are advected by these dominant waves so that they do not exhibit a well-defined dispersion relation over many realizations of the surface. Here we show that the short-wave analog to the dispersion relation is a distributed spectrum in the wavenumber-frequency plane that collapses to the standard dispersion relation in the absence of long waves. We compute probability distributions of short-wave wavenumber given a (frequency, direction) pair and of short-wave frequency given a (wavenumber, direction) pair. These two probability distributions must yield a single spectrum of surface displacements as a function of wavenumber and frequency, F(k,f). We show that the folded, azimuthally averaged version of this spectrum has a "butterfly" pattern in the wavenumber-frequency plane if significant long waves are present. Integration of this spectrum over frequency yields the well-known k-3 wavenumber spectrum. When integrated over wavenumber, the spectrum yields an f-4 form that agrees with measurement. We also show that a cut through the unfolded F(k,f) at constant k produces the well-known form of moderate-incidence-angle Doppler spectra for electromagnetic scattering from the sea. This development points out the dependence of the short-wave spectrum on the amplitude of the long waves.