Breaking Probability for Dominant Waves on the Sea Surface

Abstract The breaking probability is investigated for the dominant surface waves observed in three geographically diverse natural bodies of water: Lake Washington, the Black Sea, and the Southern Ocean. The breaking probability is taken as the average number of breaking waves passing a fixed point per wave period. The data covered a particularly wide range of dominant wavelengths (3–300 m) and wind speeds (5–20 m s−1). In all cases, the wave breaking events were detected visually. It was found that the traditional approach of relating breaking probability to the wind speed or wave age provided reasonable correlations within individual datasets, but when the diverse datasets are combined, these correlations are significantly degraded. Motivated by the results of recent computational studies of breaking onset in wave groups, the authors investigated the hypothesis that nonlinear hydrodynamic processes associated with wave groups are more fundamental to the process of breaking than previously advocated aerod...