The increased drift of steep focusing surface gravity waves

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that wave focusing significantly increases mass transport in the ocean, exceeding previous estimates, and introduces a new method to accurately predict this enhanced drift.

Contribution

It presents a novel exact method for constraining mean Lagrangian drift in wave flows and derives a higher-order expression predicting drift enhancements during wave focusing.

Findings

Wave focusing can increase mass transport by up to 30%.

The new method accurately predicts local drift enhancements in focusing wave packets.

Steepening of waves, not just linear steepness, governs the magnitude of drift enhancements.

Abstract

Irrotational and monochromatic surface gravity waves possess a mean Lagrangian drift which transports mass and enhances mixing in the upper ocean. In the ocean, where many surface waves are present, it is commonly assumed that the mean Lagrangian drift can be computed independently for each wave component and summed. Here we show, using laboratory measurements and fully nonlinear simulations of steep focusing wave packets, that this assumption underpredicts the average transport in regions of wave focusing by up to 30%. To explain these enhancements, we derive a new exact method for constraining the local mean Lagrangian drift in general flows by working in the Lagrangian reference frame. From this method, we derive a higher-order expression for the local mean Lagrangian drift in narrow-banded wave fields governed by the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation (NLSE) that predicts near-surface enhancements when waves focus and steepen. The theoretical predictions of the local transport agree with the experiments, particularly for smaller bandwidth packets where the NLSE approximation is most valid. These findings highlight that it is the local steepness of the wave field, not just the sum of the steepnesses of the linear (non-interacting) wave components, which sets the strength of these enhancements.