Field measurements of ocean surface-wave breaking

Abstract: The HIGHWAVE project (2019-2025) is primarily on wave breaking. What has been interesting at the beginning of the project is to go back and forth between what one would like to measure to better understand wave breaking and what can be realistically measured in a hostile environment. After three years, we are in the process of obtaining our first results. The real potential impact of our results, however, will clearly be the degree to which they are able to describe real oceanic free surface profiles in a sea state where breaking occurs. We have been able to access a range of data sets from low-cost wave buoys, an ADCP, a Ku-band radar and stereo vision. We have been surprised to note the lack of reliability of measurements of breaking wave events recorded in a given time series or image as measurements hit technical recording limits or generate artifacts in the data. Indeed, we have come to realize that both the quality of the data and the sophistication of data analysis of existing wave measurements from sensors are based on decades-old technologies and methodologies and are unsatisfactory for the detailed study of breaking waves.