Seiches

Abstract

Seiches are resonant standing waves that commonly occur in lakes and coastal waters. Coastal seiches, those in harbors or open coastal waters, typically have periods ranging from minutes to 100min, and heights from centimeters to >1m in rare cases. Seiches can be excited by direct disturbance of a coastal water body by meteorological, seismic or other processes, and also indirectly by open sea processes acting across the coastal shelf or harbor mouth. Long open sea waves such as tsunamis, tsunami-like meteorologically generated long waves, and tide-generated internal waves can produce large and sometimes hazardous coastal seiches.