Ann. Geophys.

, 28, 817–824, 2010

www.ann-geophys.net/28/817/2010/ Annales
© Author(s) 2010. This work is distributed under Geophysicae
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Waves in shallow water off west coast of India during the onset of
summer monsoon
V. Sanil Kumar1 , C. Sajiv Philip1 , and T. N. Balakrishnan Nair2
1 Ocean Engineering Division, National Institute of Oceanography (Council of Scientific & Industrial Research), Dona Paula,
Goa 403 004, India
2 Indian National Centre for Ocean Information System (Ministry of Earth Sciences), P.O. 21, IDA-Jeedimetla,

Hyderabad – 72, India

Received: 11 November 2009 – Revised: 11 March 2010 – Accepted: 17 March 2010 – Published: 19 March 2010

Abstract. The wave growth characteristics during the onset normally less than 1.5 m during rest of the period (Kumar and
of summer monsoon in a swell dominated open ocean at a Anand, 2004). The wave energy spectra generally have more
location off the west coast of India at 14 m water depth are than one peak depending on the generation source and also
studied. 67% of the measured waves are due to the swells the waves at any point in the ocean will be sum of local wind
arriving from south and south-west and the balance was due sea and swell components propagating from distant storms
to the seas from south-west to north-west. Wave age of the (Hanson and Phillips, 1999). Kumar et al. (2003) found
measured data indicates that the measured waves are young that along the Indian coast, about 60% of the wave spec-
sea with presence of swells. Even when the wind speed re- tra observed was multi-peaked and they were mainly single
duced to less than 3 m/s, significant wave height more than peaked when the Hm0 was more than 2 m. The double peaked
2 m is present due to the swells in the Arabian Sea. The max- spectra observed were mainly swell dominated with average
imum wave height increased from 2 to 8 m within 60 h. The value of the ratio of the two spectral peaks around 0.6 and
mean wave directions at the high frequencies align with the the average value of the difference between peak frequen-
westerly wind direction and gradually shift to south-westerly cies around 0.09 Hz. Even though the spectra were having
swell direction at low frequencies during the wave growth. two peaks, Kumar et al. (2003) found that Scott and Scott-
The strong westerly winds present between longitude 72◦ Wiegel spectra estimate the maximum spectral energy den-
and 72.5◦ at latitude 12.5◦ has created the high waves (Hm0 sity reasonably well except during the high wave along the
upto 5.65 m) during the measurement period. Indian coast. Off Goa, TMA spectrum (Bouws et al., 1985)
matched the observed sea spectra well when the sea breeze
Keywords. History of geophysics (Ocean sciences)
was active (Neetu et al., 2006) and during this period, Hm0
was less than 2 m. For high waves, it was found that TMA
model, without modifying the model parameters; over pre-
1 Introduction dict the maximum spectral energy, similar to the JONSWAP
model (Hasselmann et al., 1973). Kumar and Kumar (2008)
The wave height along the west coast of India is influenced found that at different water depth (12 to 70 m) around the In-
by the wind conditions in Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea. dian coast, the JONSWAP spectra with the modified spectral
AnGeo Communicates

Wind conditions in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea in- parameters represented the measured spectra well for Hm0
crease during mid May and high winds are observed upto more than 2 m.
September which is the period of the summer monsoon.
Along the west coast of India, significant wave height up to A number of studies were carried out to understand wave
6 m is reported during the summer monsoon period (Kumar generation and wave growth (Phillips, 1957; Miles, 1957;
et al., 2006) and the significant wave height (Hm0 ) will be Donelan and Hui, 1990). Young (1997) studied the effect of
fetch length on the growth rate in a finite depth and found that
for longer fetches, the growth rate decreases in finite depth
Correspondence to: V. Sanil Kumar compared to deep water. Wave characteristics during growth
([email protected]) and decay off the Goa coast at 80 m water depth during

Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.

818 V. Sanil Kumar et al.: Waves in shallow water during the onset of summer monsoon

tical elevations of the buoy data (heave), were added to obtain

the spectra. The high frequency cut off was set at 0.58 Hz
and the resolution was 0.005 Hz. Heave was measured in the
range of −20 to 20 m with a resolution of 1 cm and an accu-
racy of 3%. When the moored buoy follows the waves, the
force of the mooring line may change resulting in a maxi-
mum error of 1.5% in the measurement of surface elevation.
Also, if the wavelength is less than 5 m, the buoy will not fol-
low the wave amplitude and hence will not measure the wave.
The significant wave height (Hm0 ) and the mean wave period
(T m02 ) were obtained from the spectral analysis. The period
corresponding to the maximum spectral energy density is re-
ferred as spectral peak period (Tp ) and is estimated from the
wave spectrum. The sea and swell from the measured data
was separated following Portilla et al. (2009). Other param-
eters obtained were spectral width parameter (ε) based on
spectral analysis (Cartwright and Longuet-Higgins, 1956),
spectral narrowness parameter (ν) and spectral peakedness
parameter (Qp ) (Goda, 1970) as given below. The spectral
Figure 1. Wave measurement location in the north Indian Ocean. The water depth at the
Fig. 1. Wave measurement
location in the north Indian Ocean. The width and narrowness parameter varies from 0 to 1, and will
measurement location is 14 m.
water depth at the measurement location is 14 m. have smaller values for narrower spectra. Spectral peaked-
ness parameter will have higher values for narrow spectra.
s
17–24 March 1986 was studied by Rao and Baba (1996). m22
ε = 1− (1)
Wind sea growth and dissipation in a swell-dominated open m0 m4
ocean environment is investigated by Hanson and Phillips s
(1999). Hanson and Phillips (1999) and Violante-Carvalho m0 m2
ν= −1 (2)
et al. (2004) have found no obvious influence of swell on the m21
wind sea growth rates. When the measurement location 16 is
2
Z ∞
close to the coast, the wave conditions will be influenced by
Qp = 2 f S 2 (f )df (3)
sea and land breeze, shallow water depth and currents. The m0 0
horizontal extent of the sea/land breeze circulation over the
Arabian Sea is observed upto about 80–100 km (Bala Subra- Where mn is the n-th order spectral moment and is given by,
hamanyam et al., 2001). Aparna et al. (2005) observed that Z ∞
off Goa coast, during February–April, the seaward extent of mn = f n S(f )df
0
the sea breeze was about 180 km.
The knowledge on characteristics of waves in the shallow n=0, 1, 2 and 4; S(f ) is the spectral energy density at fre-
waters off India during the onset of summer monsoon are quency f .
required for prediction of waves using wave models and at Zero-crossing analysis of the surface elevation time series
present are not known. Hence a study was carried out to was used to estimate H1/3 , H1/10 and maximum wave height
know the variations in wave characteristics during the wave (Hmax ).
growth by deploying a directional waverider buoy at 14 m The wind data recorded by the NDBP buoy (15◦ 240 700 N
water depth off the coast of Goa, west coast of India. and 73◦ 450 4300 E) at 3 m above sea level was also used in
the analysis. The NDBP buoy was at a distance of around
0.9 km from the wave measurement location and was at the
2 Methods same depth contour (14 m) of the deployed wave buoy. The
time reference in the paper is in Universal Time Coordinated
Waves in the open ocean at 14 m water depth off Goa at a lo- (UTC). The local time (IST) is 5.5 h more than the UTC. The
cation 15◦ 240 2100 N; 73◦ 450 2000 E (Fig. 1) was measured us- wind speeds from the buoy (U z) were transformed to wind
ing the Datawell directional waverider buoy (Barstow and speeds at 10 m elevation (U10 ), using Prandtl 1/7 law approx-
Kollstad, 1991) during 24 May 2006 to 5 June 2006 for 12 imation,
days. The wave data were recorded continuously at 1.28 Hz.
U10 /U z = (10/z)1/7 (4)
From the recorded heave data covering 20 min duration, the
wave spectrum was obtained through Fast Fourier transform where z is the height at which the wind is measured, and
(FFT). FFT of 6 series, each consisting of 256 measured ver- U10 and U z are the wind speeds at 10 m and z m heights.

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V. Sanil Kumar et al.: Waves in shallow water during the onset of summer monsoon 819

6 (a)
Total concept of statistically stationary wave heights was proposed
Sea
Swell
by Longuet-Higgins (1952) and as per this concept; the ratios
4
Hm0 (m)

of significant wave parameters are expected to be constant

2 with the theoretical value proposed for Hmax /H1/3 as 1.53.
Our analyses show that the ratio between Hmax and Hm0 is
0
143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155
1.65 and is similar to the earlier reported results (Dattatri et
12
(b) al., 1979; Kumar, 2006). The maximum Hmax recorded is
10 8 m and is 0.57 times the water depth. When waves are prop-
agating in water of constant depth, Nelson (1994) showed
Tm02(s)

6 that for shallow water waves the upper limit value for the
4
ratio of Hmax to water depth is 0.55 and is less than that of-
2
143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155
ten used in engineering practice (0.78). Massel (1996) re-
ported that the ratio of Hmax to water depth is less than 0.6.
300 (c)
The value of 0.57 observed in the present study is similar
Direction (deg)

270

240
to the observation of Massel (1996) and is slightly higher
210 than the value proposed by Nelson (1994). For the present
180 data, significant wave height based
√ on zero crossing analysis
143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 (H1/3 ) was found to be √ 3.75 m0. In practice, Hm0 is op-
90 erationally defined as 4 m0. For deep-water narrow band
(d)
70 spectra, H1/3 and Hm0 are equivalent estimates of significant
Percentage

50
wave height (Sarpkaya and Isaacson, 1981). When a nar-
row frequency spectrum is assumed, all characteristic wave
30
heights are theoretically proportional to the standard devia-
10
tion of the water surface. Goda (1979) analysed field data
143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155
JULIAN DAY 2006
and found that for wind-driven waves in deep water, the ra-
Figure 2. Variation of (A) Significant wave height, sea and swell height, (B) Average mean
tio is approximately 3.8 instead of the narrow-band value of
Fig. 2. Variation
wave period, of (a)
mean wave period Significant
of sea, waveof swell
mean wave period height, seawave
(C) Mean anddirection
swell 4 which gives a reduction of 5%. The reduction in present
height. (b)
of swell and Average
mean mean
wave direction wave
of sea period,ofmean
(D) Percentage sea and wave
swell period of sea, case is 6.2% and the reduction is due to the presence of sea
mean wave period of swell. (c) Mean wave direction of swell and and swells in the measured data which makes the wave spec-
mean wave direction of sea. (d) Percentage of sea and swell. trum relatively broad banded. For wind-driven sea waves,
17 the assumption of a narrow-banded frequency spectrum is no
longer valid. In deep water, the Rayleigh distribution still
The logarithmic approximation is more accurate and univer- holds to a very good approximation for the zero-crossing
sal, but the Prandtl 1/7 approximation (Streeter et al., 1998) wave heights (Longuet-Higgins, 1980), but the ratios of wave
is more convenient to apply and commonly used (Kamphuis, height to standard deviation have to be reduced to account for
2001; Resio et al., 2002). Also the logarithmic approxima- the finite frequency bandwidth. We have found H1/10 /H1/3
tion requires information on the roughness parameter which to be 1.25 and were slightly lower than the Rayleigh value of
is unknown for the study location. 1.275 due to the shallow water effects.
Guedes Soares et al. (2004) showed that in addition to in-
dividual wave parameters, the asymmetry of waves can be
3 Results and discussions described by the statistics of the time series, such as the
skewness and kurtosis. Linear sea states will have no skew-
To identify the swell components from the measured data, the ness and the positive skewness value indicate that the wave
locally generated waves and the swell were separated. Hm0 crests are bigger than the troughs. Present study showed that
upto 5.65 m was recorded during the measurement period the skewness varied from −0.12 to 0.22 with a mean value
(Fig. 2a). Hm0 increased from 2 to 5.65 m in 29 h. The in- of 0.05. The high waves (Hm0 > 4 m) were associated with
crease of Hm0 from 3 to 5.65 m took 15 h and the decay from high skewness value (≈0.2). The kurtosis varied from −0.37
5.65 to 3 m took only 7.5 h. Mean T m02 was 7 s (Table 1) to 0.77. The correlation between the abnormality index (ra-
and the mean period of swell was 10 s (Fig. 2b). The mea- tio of Hmax to Hm0 ) and the kurtosis of the sea surface el-
sured waves were predominantly swells arriving from south evation was 0.6. The dependence of the abnormality index
and south-west and seas were from south-west to north-west on the kurtosis agrees with the results of Guedes Soares et
(Fig. 2c). During the measurement period, 67% of the wave al. (2004). The mean value of the sea surface elevation dur-
height was due to the swells and the remaining was due to ing 30 min interval varied from −0.003 to 0.003 m and the
the seas (Fig. 2d). Good positive correlation (correlation co- average value for all the data is 0.1×10−4 m indicating that
efficient = 0.96) was observed between Hm0 and Hmax . The the height of crest and the trough were nearly equal.

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820 V. Sanil Kumar et al.: Waves in shallow water during the onset of summer monsoon

Table 1. Range and average value of wave parameters during the onset of summer monsoon at 14 m water depth.

Wave parameter Range Average Standard deviation

Significant wave height, Hm0 (m) 0.9–5.7 2.4 0.9
Significant wave height of sea, Hss (m) 0.5–2.9 1.3 0.5
Significant wave height of swell, Hsw (m) 0.6–4.9 2.0 0.9
Maximum wave height (m) 1.3–8.0 3.4 1.4
Mean wave period, T m02 (s) 4.5–8.7 6.7 0.8
Mean wave period of sea, T m02s (s) 3.2–5.4 4.6 0.5
Mean wave period of swell, T m02sw (s) 7.8–11.6 10.0 0.8
Wave period corresponding to Hmax (s) 3.9–13.3 9.2 1.3
Peak wave period, Tp (s) 6.7–14.3 10.9 1.4
Spectral peakedness parameter, Qp 1.4–3.6 2.2 0.4
Spectral width parameter, ε 0.7–0.9 0.8 0.02
Spectral narrowness parameter, ν 0.4–0.6 0.5 0.04
Peak wave direction, θp (deg) 233–287 255 9
Mean wave direction of sea, θse (deg) 180–315 254 22
Mean wave direction of swell, θsw (deg) 167–225 199 10
Percentage of sea 13–61 33 8
Percentage of swell 39–87 67 8
Wave length (m) 31–90 63 12
Maximum spectral energy (m2 Hz−1 ) 0.4–63.3 11.1 107.6
Wind speed (m s−1 ) 0.1–13.7 4.3 2.7
Inverse wave age (U10 /Cp ) 0.009–1.05 0.34 0.044

10 period varied from 0.11 to 0.18 indicating that the measured

waves are in the transitional water. But 21% of the sea waves
Mean wave period (s)

8 are in the deep water condition. Hence the waves measured

are the transformed waves and the wave height and the wave
6 direction measured will be different than that will be in the
Measured data deep water.
4 SPM (1984) Goda (1988) observed that wave data with recording inter-
0.25
Tm 02= 5.4 H m0 vals of 6 or 12 h tend to miss the peaks of some storm events
2 and can lead to underestimation of severe wave conditions.
1 2 3 4 5 6 In the present case, the data was recorded at half hourly inter-
Significant wave height (m) val and the underestimation of maximum Hm0 with recording
Figure 3. Variation of mean wave period with significant wave height interval of 3, 6 and 12 h compared to half hourly interval are
Fig. 3. Variation of mean wave period with significant wave height. 8.8, 20.7 and 20.7%. In order to compensate for this effect,
Allen and Callaghan (1999) used a simple block adjustment
factor of 7% for the 6 h recording interval data and 10% for
the 12 h recording intervals to each peak Hm0 value. The ad-
The average tidal range in the study area is 1.69 m dur- justment factors used were found to be lower for the present
ing spring tide and 0.73 m during neap tide (Kumar et al., data due to the fact that the present data set was during the
2006). The currents measured at mid depth near the wave growth of waves and hence the wave condition was changing
buoy location shows that the maximum u-component of cur- rapidly.
rents (zonal) was 0.3 m/s and the v-component of current
In order to study the variation of T m02 with Hm0 , the scat-
(meridional) was 0.4 m/s. Since the current speed is less than
ter plot is presented (Fig. 3) and found that T m02 follow the
0.4 m/s, the influence of currents on the waves will be less.
expression given below.
The water depth at the wave measurement location is 14 m
and hence the measured waves will have depth influence. b
T m02 = aHm0 (5)
Wave length associated with the mean wave period varied
from 31 to 90 m, d/L ratio varied from 0.16 to 0.45 indicat- Where a=5.4 and b=0.25.
Figure 4. Variation in sea surface elevation during 27 to 29 May 2006 (for 62 h)
ing that the measured waves are in the transitional water. The Kamphuis (2001) presented the value of a and b for differ-
ratio of depth and wave length associated with the swell wave ent locations as given below.

Ann. Geophys., 28, 817–824, 2010 18 www.ann-geophys.net/28/817/2010/

 4 SPM (1984)

Me
0.25
Tm 02= 5.4 H m0
2

1 2 3 4 5 6

V. Sanil Kumar et Significant

al.: Waveswave height (m)
in shallow water during the onset of summer monsoon 821
Figure 3. Variation of mean wave period with significant wave height

290
(a)

270

οp
250

230
143 145 147 149 151 153 155

wind speed (m/s)

15
(b)
10

0
143 145 147 149 151 153 155

0.14

fp
0.1
(c)
Figure 4. Variation in sea surface elevation during 27 to 29 May 2006 (for 62 h)
Fig. 4. Variation in sea surface elevation during 27 to 29 May 2006 0.06
143 145 147 149 151 153 155
(for 62 h). 0.6 (d)

nu
0.5
18
a=3.54; b=0.6 for Lake Huron
0.4
a=4.45; b=0.45 for Lake Ontario
143 145 147 149 151 153 155
a=3.94; b=0.38 for North Sea 4
(e)
a=4.04; b=0.47 for Dubai 3
Qp

a=6.96; b=0.28 for Israel 2

The variation of T m02 with Hm0 was not following the re- 1
lation proposed in SPM (1984). The high waves (Hm0 =5 143 145 147 149 151 153 155
JULIAN DAY 2006
to 6 m) were associated with mean wave period of 7 to 8 s
and the high wave period (8 to 9 s) was associated with Hm0 Figure 5. Variation of (A) peak wave direction, (B) wind speed, (C) peak frequency, (D)
Fig.
spectral5.narrowness
Variation of and
parameter (a)(E)spectral
peak wave direction,
peakedness parameter (b) wind speed,
varying from 2.5 to 3.5 m (Fig. 3) due to the fact that the
(c) peak frequency, (d) spectral narrowness parameter and (e) spec-
measurements were carried out in open ocean and swells tral peakedness parameter.
that have originated from a distant storm might have decayed
19
with time resulting in low wave height whereas the wave pe-
riod remains high. uninterrupted wind wave measurements and found that the
The variation in sea surface elevation during 27 to 29 May process of shifting toward lower frequency is not persistent
2006 is presented in Fig. 4. The wave height increased from and it is more of an incipient occurrence at the early stage
2 to 8 m during 60 h. The peak wave direction (mean wave of the growth. As the waves continue to grow, the shifts be-
direction corresponding to the maximum spectral energy) de- come less conspicuous and proceeded to coalesce into a uni-
creased from 270◦ to 240◦ during the wave growth period fied predominant peak frequency during the vigorous wave
(Fig. 5a). The peak mean wave directions at the high fre- growth stage.
quencies align with the westerly wind direction and gradu- During the measurements, the spectral narrowness pa-
ally shift to south-westerly swell direction at low frequen- rameter (ν) has a mean value of around 0.5 (Table 1) and
cies. During the study period, the wind speed (U10 ) ranged is marginally high (around 0.55) when bimodal nature of
from 0.1 to 13.7 m/s (Fig. 5b). The value of Hm0 more than the spectrum consisting of low-energy swell from the north
2 m when the local wind speed was less than 3 m/s indicate Indian Ocean and a high frequency local component was
the presence of swell along the west coast of India. present. When the wave height was high, ν was relatively
The shifting of peak frequency towards lower frequen- small with value around 0.44 (Fig. 5d) indicating that the
cies (from 0.12 to 0.08 Hz) is noticed during 15 h on 24 wave spectrum was relatively narrow banded during high
May to 8 h on 29 May 2006, i.e. during the initial stage of waves. The spectral width parameter (ε) varied from 0.74
wave growth (Fig. 5c). The peak frequency is uniform dur- to 0.85. During the high waves, the value of ε was around
ing 8 to 23 h on 29 May 2006. The shifting of peak fre- 0.78. The value of the spectral peakedness parameter (Qp )
quency towards the lower frequency is recognized as one varied from 2.5 to 3 for high waves (Fig. 5e). Large values
of the wave growth characteristics. As a result of the dy- of Qp also indicate the wave spectrum is narrow banded for
namical processes the peak shifts to lower frequencies and high waves.
the spectrum broadens. Liu et al. (2007) presented complete
episode of wave growth process from 10 h of continuous and

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822 V. Sanil Kumar et al.: Waves in shallow water during the onset of summer monsoon

1000 where the spectral components below this value are classi-
fied as swell and above as wind sea. In the present case,
only 3% of the waves have inverse wave age more than 0.83
100
(Fig. 6) which indicates that the pure wind sea was very less.
In the open ocean, where most wave systems are close to be-
Non-dimensional energy (E)

10 ing fully developed, the variation in wave age is small and

becomes of less importance. Thus, swell has been proposed
as a possible contributing factor to altering the growth rate of
1 wind-sea in mixed wave conditions. In this context, the rel-
ative direction between wind and swell is crucial (Donelan
et al., 1992; Drennan et al., 1999; Kudryavtsev and Makin,
0.1 2 g2 /(16 U 4 )]
2004). The non-dimensional energy [E=Hm0 10
was slightly higher than the value proposed by Donelan et
0.01 al. (1992).
Even though, high local wind (upto 13 m/s) was present,
E = 0.0022 (U10/Cp)-3.3 the measured waves were predominantly swells due to the
0.001 fact that energy of the wind sea reduces and that of the swell
0 0.4 0.8 1.2 increases when the swell is added to the system (Donelan,
Inverse wave age (U10/Cp) 1987).
The estimated fetch based on JONSWAP peak-frequency-
Fig. 6. Variation of non-dimensional energy with inverse wave age. fetch relationship (Long and Resio, 2007) for the high waves
Figure 6. Variation of non-dimensional energy with inverse wave age
varies from 80 to 100 km. The peak wave direction corre-
sponding to the high waves was 240 to 260◦ . On examining
Since the measurement location is just 3 km from the the NCEP wind (Kalnay et al., 1996) in the Arabian Sea, it
coast, the sea breeze and land breeze can influence the wave is found that strong westerly winds was present at between
parameters. But the present data collected during the onset longitude 72◦ and 72.5◦ along the latitude 12.5◦ and it has
of monsoon does not show significant influence of sea breeze created the high waves and the phase difference between the
on the wave parameters. Mandal and Halder (1992) ob- wind and the wave is 20 h. The propagation speed of the
served that during the summer monsoon (May–September), wave is between 9 and 10 m/s.
the wind field is dominated by the large-scale atmospheric
circulation and the winds are westerly (inshore) along the 20
west coast of India and there is practically no land or sea 4 Conclusions
breeze when the monsoon is active, but a weak land and sea-
breeze system develops during a break in the monsoon. The high waves (Hm0 =5 to 6 m) were associated with mean
The nature of sea state is identified based on the wave wave period of 7 to 8 s and the high wave period (8 to 9 s) was
steepness (Hm0 /L) and the wave age (Cp /U10 ), where Cp associated with Hm0 varying from 2.5 to 3.5 m due to the fact
is the wave phase speed at peak frequency. Wave steep- that the measurements were carried out in open ocean and
ness is expressed as the ratio between the significant wave swells that have originated from a distant storm might have
height and the wave length of the peak period. Thompson decayed with time resulting in low wave height whereas the
et al. (1984) classified ocean waves based on (Hm0 /L) as wave period remains high.
sea, young swell, mature swell and old swell. According The water depth at the measurement location is 14 m and
to their classification, locally generated waves or sea waves hence waves measured are the transformed waves and the
have steepness values greater than 0.025. In the present case, wave height and the wave direction measured will be differ-
correlation between wave age and wave steepness is low and ent than that will be in the deep water.
the waves steepness was greater than 0.025. Young sea is de- The ratio of maximum Hmax to the water depth is 0.57 and
fined when wave ages <10 and an old sea is defined as wave this ratio is similar to the observation of Massel (1996) and
ages >25. Wave age of the measured data is less than 25 is slightly higher than the value proposed by Nelson (1994).
with most values less than 10. Hence the waves are young Wave age is less than 25 with most values less than 10 and
sea with presence of swells. Positive correlation is found be- hence the waves during the onset of summer monsoon are
tween wind speed (U10 ) and Hm0 . When the wind and wave young sea with presence of swells.
directions are opposite from each other, the wind speed ap- Spectral narrowness parameter was around 0.44 when the
plies an opposing stress against the waves and therefore the wave height was high and slightly large (around 0.55) when
wave height growth is negative. bimodal nature of the spectrum consisting of low-energy
swell from north Indian Ocean and a high frequency local
Donelan et al. (1993) proposed that U10 /Cp =0.83 corre-
component was present.
sponds to the value of the spectrum at full development,

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V. Sanil Kumar et al.: Waves in shallow water during the onset of summer monsoon 823

During the high waves, the fetch estimated based on Goda, Y.: On the Methodology of Selecting Design Wave Height,
JONSWAP peak-frequency-fetch relationship is from 80 to in: Proceedings 21st Coastal Engineering Conference, ASCE,
100 km and it is found that strong westerly winds present at 899–913, 1988.
between longitude 72◦ and 72.5◦ along the latitude 12.5◦ has Goda, Y.: Numerical experiments on wave statistics with spec-
created the high waves. The propagation speed of the wave tral simulation, in: Report Port and Harbour Research Institute,
Japan, 9, 3–57, 1970.
is between 9 and 10 m/s.
Goda, Y.: A review on statistical interpretation of wave data, in:
Acknowledgements. Authors thank Satish R. Shetye, Director, NIO Report of the Port and Harbour Research Institute, Japan, 18, 5–
and Satheesh C. Shenoi, Director, INCOIS for providing facilities 32, 1979.
and encouragement. Also thank P. Pednekar, K. Ashok Kumar, Guedes Soares, C., Cherneva, Z., and Antao, E. M.: Steepness and
R. Gowthaman, Ganesh N. Naik and Manohar Manohar for the help asymmetry of the largest waves in storm sea states, Ocean Eng.,
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