A comparison of observed and modeled surface waves in southern Lake Michigan and the implications for models of sediment resuspension

Abstract

Subsurface pressure sensors were used to make measurements of surface waves during 18 deployments in southern Lake Michigan between 1998 and 2000. Most of the observations were made during the unstratified period (November–May) in water depths between 10 and 55 m. The observations (as well as those obtained from the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) buoy 45007, which is located in the middle of the southern basin of the lake) were compared to the results obtained from the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL)‐Donelan wave model implemented on a 2‐km grid. The results show that the wave model does a good job of calculating the wave heights, but consistently underestimates the wave periods. In over 80% of the cases the bottom stresses calculated from both the observations and the wave model results agree as to whether or not resuspension occurs, but over 70% of this agreement is for cases when resuspension does not occur; both stresses predict resuspension about 6% of the time. Since the bottom stresses calculated from the model results are usually lower than those calculated from the observations, resuspension estimates based on the wave model parameters are also lower than those calculated from the observed waves.