Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 32 (2015): 1945–1959, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-14-00222.1.
Description:
Observations of waves and setup on a steep, sandy beach are used to identify and assess potential applications of spatially dense lidar measurements for studying inner-surf and swash-zone hydrodynamics. There is good agreement between lidar- and pressure-based estimates of water levels (r2 = 0.98, rmse = 0.05 m), setup (r2 = 0.92, rmse = 0.03 m), infragravity wave heights (r2 = 0.91, rmse = 0.03 m), swell–sea wave heights (r2 = 0.87, rmse = 0.07 m), and energy density spectra. Lidar observations did not degrade with range (up to 65 m offshore of the lidar) when there was sufficient foam present on the water surface to generate returns, suggesting that for narrow-beam 1550-nm light, spatially varying spot size, grazing angle affects, and linear interpolation (to estimate the water surface over areas without returns) are not large sources of error. Consistent with prior studies, the lidar and pressure observations indicate that standing infragravity waves dominate inner-surf and swash energy at low frequencies and progressive swell–sea waves dominate at higher frequencies. The spatially dense lidar measurements enable estimates of reflection coefficients from pairs of locations at a range of spatial lags (thus spanning a wide range of frequencies or wavelengths). Reflection is high at low frequencies, increases with beach slope, and decreases with increasing offshore wave height, consistent with prior studies. Lidar data also indicate that wave asymmetry increases rapidly across the inner surf and swash. The comparisons with pressure measurements and with theory demonstrate that lidar measures inner-surf waves and setup accurately, and can be used for studies of inner-surf and swash-zone hydrodynamics.
Description:
Funding was provided
by the USACE Coastal Field Data Collection (CFDC)
and Coastal Ocean Data Systems (CODS) programs, the
Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation,
and the Assistant Secretary of Defense (R&E).
Description:
2016-04-01
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
