Estimates of the Breaking Strength Parameter for Individual Oceanic Whitecaps

IF 4.6 1区地球科学 Q1 GEOSCIENCES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Geophysical Research Letters Pub Date : 2025-09-24 DOI:10.1029/2025GL116342

Adrian H. Callaghan

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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to present the first estimates of the breaking strength parameter, $b$ , for individual oceanic whitecaps. This is achieved by combining the estimates of the dissipation rate per unit breaking crest length for these whitecaps reported in Callaghan et al. (2024, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023jc020193) with a measure of the whitecap breaking wave speed to implement the Duncan (1981, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1981.0127) relationship. The resulting values of $b$ span the range of previously reported laboratory values. Moreover, average values of $b$ are in excellent agreement with previous field-derived average values using different approaches. The results suggest that making routine estimates of $b$ for individual whitecaps is now possible. This opens up new possibilities for how the fifth moment of Phillips' $Λ (c)$ distribution of breaking wave crests can be better constrained to estimate the total dissipation rate of energy by oceanic whitecaps.

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个别海洋白浪断裂强度参数的估计

本研究的目的是提出对单个海洋白浪的断裂强度参数的初步估计。这是通过将Callaghan等人（2024,https://doi.org/10.1029/2023jc020193）报道的这些白浪的单位破浪波峰长度耗散率估计与白浪破浪速度测量相结合来实现Duncan （1981, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1981.0127）关系。结果值跨越先前报告的实验室值的范围。此外，平均值与以前使用不同方法获得的野外平均值非常一致。结果表明，对单个白浪进行常规估计现在是可能的。这为如何更好地约束菲利普斯破碎波峰分布的第五矩来估计海洋白浪的总能量耗散率开辟了新的可能性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Geophysical Research Letters 地学-地球科学综合

CiteScore

9.00

自引率

9.60%

发文量

1588

审稿时长

2.2 months

期刊介绍： Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) publishes high-impact, innovative, and timely research on major scientific advances in all the major geoscience disciplines. Papers are communications-length articles and should have broad and immediate implications in their discipline or across the geosciences. GRLmaintains the fastest turn-around of all high-impact publications in the geosciences and works closely with authors to ensure broad visibility of top papers.