Linear and two-dimensional geometry of whitecapping and foam structures

Abstract

As already noted (Chapter 1), investigation of the spatiotemporal characteristics of foam activity at the breaking of individual gravitational waves is a topical means of solving numerous scientific and applied problems of oceanology, such as studying the ocean-atmosphere interaction (Monahan, 2001), wind-wave dynamics (Phillips, 1977), the development of techniques for remote sensing of the ocean surface (Phillips, 1988; Glazman, 1991a; Sharkov, 1998, 2003), the development of reliable quantitative measures for determining the state of a disturbed sea surface, instead of descriptive estimations of the Beaufort Scale that still have not satisfied practical demands (Alcock and Morgan, 1978; Bortkovskiy, 1983). The most important quantitative characteristics of foam activity include the individual dimensions of various types of formations (crests and strip structures), as well as their fractional coverage areas, depending on surface wind velocity, sea surface state, size of sea waves, season of observation, biological activity at the given World Ocean area, etc. Here, since the wave-breaking and subsequent whitecapping process depend on many factors of a physical, chemical, and biological nature, it should be considered as a stochastic process, and its quantitative characteristics should be described in appropriate, correct statistical language. In a series of earlier papers devoted to studying foam structures (Monahan, 1971; Ross and Cordon, 1974; Samoilenko et al., 1974; Bortkovskiy and Kuznetsov, 1977; Bortkovskiy, 1983, 1987), no correct statistical processing of experimental data was performed—for example, the character and specific type of distributions of measured parameters was not clarified; no data were presented on volumes of ranked sets of elements, on confidence intervals of measurement errors, etc.