Role of Nonlinear Four-Wave Interactions Source Term on the Spectral Shape

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to investigate the importance of the four-wave nonlinear interactions (SNL4) on the shape of the power spectrum of ocean waves. To this end, the following results are discussed: a number of authors have conducted modern experimental measurements of ocean waves over the past decades and found that the measured power spectrum has (a) a very high central peak (characterized by the parameter γ, developed in the 1970s in the JONSWAP program) and (b) enhanced high-frequency channels which lead to the phenomenon of “bimodality”, also a well-known phenomenon. We discuss how a numerical hindcast of the Draupner storm (1995) with the standard code WAVEWATCH-III with full Boltzmann interactions also reflects these previously experimentally determined spectral shapes. Our results suggest that the use of the full Boltzmann interactions (as opposed to the discrete interaction approximation often employed for forecasting/hindcasting) is important for obtaining this characteristic physical spectral shape of the power spectrum.