Why rogue waves occur atop abrupt depth transitions
- 1University of Oxford, United Kingdom of Great Britain – England, Scotland, Wales
- 2Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
- 3Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, University of Manchester, UK
- 4School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
- 5Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
Abrupt depth transitions have recently been identified as potential causes of `rogue' or extreme ocean waves. When stationary and (close-to) normally distributed waves travel into shallower water over an abrupt depth transition, distinct spatially localized peaks in the probability of extreme waves occur. These peaks have been predicted numerically, observed experimentally, but not explained theoretically. Providing this theoretical explanation using a leading-order-physics-based statistical model, we show the peaks arise from the interaction between linear free and second-order bound waves, also present in the absence of the abrupt depth transition, and new second-order free waves generated due to the abrupt depth transition.
How to cite: van den Bremer, T., Li, Y., Draycott, S., Zheng, Y., Lin, Z., and Adcock, T.: Why rogue waves occur atop abrupt depth transitions, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10645, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10645, 2021.
