EGU General Assembly 2009 © Author(s) 2009 Significance of laboratory observations for modeling wind-driven seas

In what sense can the laboratory wind-wave observations help in investigating and modeling wave growth in wind-driven seas? This old outstanding question is addressed by an extensive laboratory study in the large IRPHE wind-wave tank (Caulliez, 2009). We show that for a wide range of parameters the fetch-limited wind wave growth observed in the facility follows fairly well the wind-wave growth law predicted by weak turbulence model (Badulin et al., 2007). The wind speeds were ranging from 3.5 to 16 m/s and wave ages cp/U10 were smaller than 0.15 (cp being the phase speed of spectral peak waves, and U10 the equivalent 10 m level wind speed). The recent model of wind wave evolution proposed by Badulin et al. (2007) assumes the dominance of nonlinear four-wave resonant interactions over the direct wave input from wind and wave dissipation. The model predicts that the total wave energy is rigidly linked to the total wave energy flux (i.e. the energy growth rate dE/dt) by the relationship: E ω4p g2 = α ω3p dE/dt g2)1/