Ocean Surface Waves - Their Physics and Prediction. Advanced Series on Ocean Engineering, Volume 11. (Electronic book text)

The book is intended as a handbook for professionals and researchers in the areas of Physical Oceanography, Ocean and Coastal Engineering and as a text for graduate students in these fields. The book presents a comprehensive study on surface ocean waves induced by wind, including basic mathematical principles, physical description of the observed phenomena, practical forecasting techniques of various wave parameters and application in ocean and coastal engineering, all from the stochastic point of view. The book commences with a description of mechanisms of surface wave generation by wind and its modern modelling techniques. The stochastic and probabilistic terminology is introduced and the basic statistical and spectral properties of ocean waves are developed and discussed in detail. The bulk of material deals with the prediction techniques for waves in deep and coastal waters for simple and complex ocean basins and their bathymetry. The various prediction methods, currently used in oceanography and ocean engineering, are described and the examples of practical calculations illustrate the basic text. In the book a lot of discoveries of the Russian and East European scientists, largely unknown in the Western literature due to the language barrier, are referred.