Abstract
AbstractField measurements collected with surface drifters at New River Inlet (NC, USA) are used to characterize wave breaking and turbulence in the presence of currents. Shoreward wave evolution is affected by currents, and breaking is observed in deeper water with opposing currents (ebb tides) relative to the following currents (flood tides). Wave dissipation models are evaluated with observed cross‐shore gradients in wave energy flux. Wave dissipation models that include the effects of currents are better correlated with the observations than the depth‐only models. Turbulent dissipation rates measured in the breaking regions are used to evaluate two existing scaling models for the vertical structure and magnitude of turbulent dissipation relative to wave dissipation. Although both describe the rapid decay of turbulence beneath the surface, exponential vertical scaling by water depth is superior to power law vertical scaling by wave height.
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