• Login
    About WHOAS
    View Item 
    •   WHOAS Home
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    • Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering (AOP&E)
    • View Item
    •   WHOAS Home
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    • Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering (AOP&E)
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of WHOASCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesKeywordsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesKeywords

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    Field observations of shear waves in the surf zone

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    2002JC001761.pdf (1.005Mb)
    Date
    2004-01-31
    Author
    Noyes, T. James  Concept link
    Guza, R. T.  Concept link
    Elgar, Steve  Concept link
    Herbers, T. H. C.  Concept link
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3665
    As published
    https://doi.org/10.1029/2002JC001761
    Keyword
     Shear waves; Longshore currents; Surf zone 
    Abstract
    Alongshore propagating meanders of the mean alongshore current in the surf zone called shear waves have periods of a few minutes and wavelengths of a few hundred meters. Here shear wave properties are estimated with arrays of current meters deployed for 4 months within 300 m of the shoreline of a sandy beach. Shear wave velocity fluctuations are approximately horizontally isotropic, with root mean square values between 10 and 40% of the mean (3-hour-averaged) alongshore current V. Cross-shore variations of the time-averaged shear wave momentum flux are consistent with shear wave energy generation close to shore where the breaking wave-driven mean alongshore current V and current shear Vx are strong and with shear wave energy dissipation and transfer back to the mean flow farther offshore where V and Vx are weak. In case studies where V is a narrow jet near the shoreline the observed strong decay of shear wave energy levels seaward of the jet, and the cross-shore and alongshore structure of shear waves within the jet, are similar to predictions based on the linearly unstable modes of the observed V. Shear wave energy levels also are high in a marginally unstable case with a strong, but weakly sheared, V.
    Description
    Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2004. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 109 (2004): C01031, doi:10.1029/2002JC001761.
    Collections
    • Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering (AOP&E)
    Suggested Citation
    Journal of Geophysical Research 109 (2004): C01031
     

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • Thumbnail

      On nonhydrostatic coastal model simulations of shear instabilities in a stratified shear flow at high Reynolds number 

      Zhou, Zheyu; Yu, Xiao; Hsu, Tian-Jian; Shi, Fengyan; Geyer, W. Rockwell; Kirby, James T. (John Wiley & Sons, 2017-04-11)
      The nonhydrostatic surface and terrain-following coastal model NHWAVE is utilized to simulate a continually forced stratified shear flow in a straight channel, which is a generic problem to test the existing nonhydrostatic ...
    • Thumbnail

      Shear instability and coherent structures in shallow flow adjacent to a porous layer 

      White, Brian L.; Nepf, Heidi M. (Cambridge University Press, 2007-11-23)
      Results are presented from an experimental study of shallow flow in a channel partially obstructed by an array of circular cylinders. The cylinder array is a model for emergent vegetation in an open channel, but also ...
    • Thumbnail

      Development of an acoustic vorticity meter to measure shear in ocean-boundary layers 

      Thwaites, Fredrik T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1995-09)
      This thesis describes the analysis and development of an acoustic vorticity meter to measure shear in ocean-boundary layers over smaller measurement volumes than previously possible. A nonintrusive measurement of vorticity ...
    All Items in WHOAS are protected by original copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. WHOAS also supports the use of the Creative Commons licenses for original content.
    A service of the MBLWHOI Library | About WHOAS
    Contact Us | Send Feedback | Privacy Policy
    Core Trust Logo