# Shoaling on Steep Continental Slopes: Relating Transmission and Reflection Coefficients to Green's Law

## TL;DR

This paper investigates wave shoaling on steep continental slopes, analyzing how transmission and reflection coefficients relate to Green's Law, especially in the intermediate steepness case relevant for tsunami modeling.

## Contribution

It clarifies the relationship between transmission, reflection coefficients, and Green's Law for steep slopes, bridging the gap between sharp and broad slope approximations.

## Key findings

- Transmission coefficient accurately predicts wave amplification on steep slopes.
- Green's Law overestimates amplification compared to transmission coefficient in steep slope scenarios.
- Reflection is minimal for very steep slopes, aligning with theoretical predictions.

## Abstract

The propagation of long waves onto a continental shelf is of great interest in tsunami modeling and other applications where understanding the amplification of waves during shoaling is important. When the linearized shallow water equations are solved with the continental shelf modeled as a sharp discontinuity, the ratio of the amplitudes is given by the transmission coefficient. On the other hand, when the slope is very broad relative to the wavelength of the incoming wave, then amplification is governed by Green's Law, which predicts a larger amplification than the transmission coefficient, and a much smaller amplitude reflection than given by the reflection coefficient of a sharp interface. We explore the relation between these results and elucidate the behavior in the intermediate case of a very steep continental shelf.