Wave breaking probabilities under wind forcing in open sea and laboratory

Water wave breaking represents one of the most arduous problems in fluid mechanics. Understanding the process of wave breaking and developing an ability to quantify the associated energy losses and redistribution are critical across a wide range of coastal oceanic applications, maritime navigation, and climate and hydrodynamic research. Naturally, waves become steeper toward the inception of breaking; however, there is still a lack of unanimity regarding the relationship between breaking probability statistics and wave steepness. Here, we present a detailed investigation of breaking vs non-breaking statistics estimated using a recently developed method for accurate detection of breaking waves, based on the phase-time approach to identify breaking-associated patterns in the instantaneous frequency variations of surface elevation fluctuations. The findings are based on data collected both in the open sea and in a laboratory wind wave flume. An in-depth examination of celerities and steepnesses of breaking and non-breaking waves is presented. The analysis, which involved wave-by-wave examination, produced skewed Gaussian-like steepness histograms, revealing that non-breaking waves and breaking waves can reach steeper profiles, above the Stokes limit. All extreme steepness values were investigated and are presented here.