Ocean Waves Waves are disturbances in the ocean that transmit energy from one place to another.

The most familiar types of wavesthe ones that cause boats to bob up and down on the open sea and dissipate as breakers on beachesare generated by wind on the ocean surface. Other ocean wave types include tsunamis, which are often caused by underwater earthquakes, and internal waves, which travel underwater between water masses. Tides are also a type of wave. Ocean Wave Properties A group of waves consists of several crests separated by troughs. The height of the waves is called the amplitude, the distance between successive wave crests is known as the wavelength, and the time between successive wave crests is the period. Waves are classified into types based on their periods. They range from ripples, which have periods of less than 0.5 seconds, up to tsunamis and tides, whose periods are measured in minutes and hours (their wavelengths range from hundreds to thousands of miles). In between these extremes are chop and swellthe most familiar types of surface waves. Ocean waves behave like light rays: they are reflected or refracted by obstacles they encounter, such as islands. When different wave groups meet, they interfereadding to, or cancelling, each other. Ocean Wave Generation Wind energy is imparted to the sea surface through friction and pressure, causing waves. As the wind gains strength, the surface develops gradually from flat and smooth through growing levels of roughness. First, ripples form, then larger waves, called chop. The waves continue to build, their maximum size depending on three factors: wind speed, wind duration, and the area over which the wind is blowing, called the fetch. When ocean waves are as large as they can get under the current conditions of wind speed and size of fetch, the sea surface is said to be fully developed. The overall state of a sea surface can be summarized by the significant wave heightdefined as the average height of the highest one-third of the waves. For example, in a fully developed sea produced by winds of about 25 mph (40 km/h), the significant wave height is typically about 8 ft. (2.5 m). Wave Propagation on the Ocean In the fetch, many different groups of waves of varying wavelength are generated and interfere. As they disperse away from the fetch, the waves become more regularly sized and spaced. This is because the speed of a wave in open water is closely related to its wavelength. The different groups of waves move at different speeds and so are naturally sorted by wavelength: the largest, fastestmoving waves at the fore, the smaller, slower-moving ones behind. This produces a regular wave pattern, or swells. Occasionally, groups of waves from separate storms interfere to produce unusually large rogue waves. As they propagate across the open ocean, wind-generated waves maintain a constant speed, which is unaffected by depth until they reach shallow water.

When out in open water there is little horizontal movement of ocean water, the bulk of the motion is up and down or vertical. However, this changes slightly when waves approach the coastline. As the water approaches the coastline it encounters increasing contact with the shelving sea bed, which exerts a frictional force on the base of the wave. This changes the normal circular orbit of the wave into an elliptical orbit. As the waves gets closer and closer to the coast the impact of friction grows, with the top of the wave moving faster than the base of the wave. Eventually a critical point is reached where the top of the wave (the CREST) curves over and creates a breaking wave. This breaking wave can be further disrupted by water returning down the coastline back out to sea. Arrival on Shore As ocean waves approach a shore, the motion they generate deep down begins to interact with the sea floor. This slows the waves down and causes the crests in a series of waves to bunch upan effect called shoaling. The period of the waves does not change, but they gain height as the energy each contains is compressed into a shorter horizontal distance, and eventually break. There are two main types of breakers. Spilling breakers occur on flatter shores: their crests break and cascade down the front as they draw near the shore, dissipating energy gradually. In a plunging breaker, which occurs on steeper shores, the crest curls and falls over the front of the advancing wave, and the whole wave then collapses at once. Ocean waves can also refract as they reach a coastline. This concentrates wave energy onto headlands and shapes some types of beaches.

PLUNGING BREAKER "Barrel" or "tube-forming" breakers like this occur when the waves reaching shore have large amounts of energy. The seabed must be firm and quite steep.

Constructive and Destructive Waves When the swash is bigger than backwash material gets pushed up to the back of beaches rather than removed. This steepens the beach profile. These waves are called CONSTRUCTIVE WAVES, and these waves tend to have low waves heights, lower wave frequencies (they break less often) and the waves are less steep. These waves are created by storms far out to sea which create a large swell which eventually reaches the coast. Where backwash is larger than swash more material is being eroded from the beach profile than is being accumulated. This carries material out to sea and makes for a gentler beach profile. These waves are called DESTRUCTIVE WAVES which have steeper wave profiles, larger and higher wave crests and come more frequently.

Wave refraction Wave refraction refers to what happens to waves when they approach an uneven coastline. Very few coastlines are perfectly straight, and few sea beds have uniform height and shape. This is known as the varying Geomorphology of our coastline and it will affect the waves travelling above it and towards it in differing ways. As waves approach an uneven coastline they reach the headlands first, this focuses a lot of energy on those forelands and bends the waves into the bays where the energy expended is less. Refraction of waves involves a change in the direction of waves as they pass from one medium to another. Refraction, or the bending of the path of the waves, is accompanied by a change in speed and wavelength of the waves. It is known that the speed of a wave is dependent upon the properties of the medium through which the waves travel. So if the medium (and its properties) is changed, the speed of the waves is changed. The most significant property of water that would affect the speed of waves traveling on its surface is the depth of the water. Water waves travel fastest when the medium is the deepest. Thus, if water waves are passing from deep water into shallow water, they will slow down. This decrease in speed will also be accompanied by a decrease in wavelength. So as water waves are transmitted from deep water into shallow water, the speed decreases, the wavelength decreases, and the direction changes.

This boundary behaviour of water waves can be observed in a ripple tank if the tank is partitioned into a deep and a shallow section. If a pane of glass is placed in the bottom of the tank, one part of the tank will be deep and the other part of the tank will be shallow. Waves traveling from the deep end to the shallow end can be seen to refract (i.e., bend), decrease wavelength (the wave fronts get closer together), and slow down (they take a longer time to travel the same distance). When traveling from deep water to shallow water, the waves are seen to bend in such a manner that they seem to be traveling more perpendicular to the surface. If traveling from shallow water to deep water, the waves bend in the opposite direction. Refraction vs. Diffraction A Physics definition of refraction involves a change in the direction of waves as they pass from one medium to another. This is due to energy conservation when a wave changes its wavelength, and thus wave speed, as it enters a new medium (like in light or sound waves traveling from air to water). Now, in terms of ocean waves, refraction also involves a change of direction when a wave experiences a shift in wavelength and wave speed. However, this shift generally occurs due to changes in ocean depth. As a wave travels from deep to shallow water, the wavelength shortens, the wave speed slows down, and the wave will refract, or bend, toward the shallow area in order to conserve its energy. Diffraction occurs when a wave encounters an obstruction in its path and will change direction, or wrap around it. In ocean waves, we see this occur when a wave encounters an object like a jetty and the wave rotates around it (sometimes diffraction also occurs when a waves moves through a small opening in a seawall or between or two islands). The 'wrapping' or turning potential of a wave is larger in waves with a longer wavelength (i.e. longer period). Wave refraction due to bottom shoaling The simplest description of waves propagating over a slowly changing sea bottom is given by the geometric optics approximation (Massel 1989). A wave ray, being basic quantity in this approximation, is a curve which is tangent to the local wave number k vector at every point along the curve. The wave number should satisfy the following conservation energy: d(kSin(P))/dx =d(kSin(P))/dy =0 .(1)

in which K=|k|, and P is an angle between normal to local bottom contours and wave direction. For bottom contours parallel to the y-direction, equation (1) reduces to : k(Sin(P))=k*(Sin(P*)) = constant ..(2) {Snells Law}

Refraction of ocean waves when approaches the coastline forms the white foam of waves breaking on a rock or shore (surf).

(Pictures showing refraction of ocean waves as they approach the coastline)

References 1. Oceana.org/en/explore/marine-science/ocean-waves OCEAN WAVES 09-04-2012 12:41am

2. Advanced series on Ocean Engineering-Volume 11 OCEAN SURFACE WAVES: THEIR PHYSICS AND PREDICTION Stanislaw R. Massel, World Scientific, Chapter 6, page 256