Identification

Title

A global climatology of wind-wave interaction

Abstract

Generally, ocean waves are thought to act as a drag on the surface wind so that momentum is transferred downward, from the atmosphere into the waves. Recent observations have suggested that when long wavelength waves which are characteristic of remotely generated swellâ€”propagate faster than the surface wind, momentum can also be transferred upward. This upward momentum transfer acts to accelerate the near-surface wind, resulting in a low-level wave-driven wind jet. Previous studies have suggested that the sign reversal of the momentum flux is well predicted by the inverse wave age, the ratio of the surface wind speed to the speed of the waves at the peak of the spectrum. Data from the 40-yr ECMWF Re-Analysis (ERA-40) have been used here to calculate the global distribution of the inverse wave age to determine whether there are regions of the ocean that are usually in the wind-driven wave regime and others that are generally in the wave-driven wind regime. The wind-driven wave regime is found to occur most often in the midlatitude storm tracks where wind speeds are generally high. The wave-driven wind regime is found to be prevalent in the tropics where wind speeds are generally light and swell can propagate from storms at higher latitudes. The inverse wave age is also a useful indicator of the degree of coupling between the local wind and wave fields. The climatologies presented emphasize the nonequilibrium that exists between the local wind and wave fields and highlight the importance of swell in the global oceans.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d70866k8

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

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Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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End position

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date type

publication

effective date

2010-06-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2010 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

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