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I would like to know which are the best methods used to predict sea waves characteristics (particularly predict length/height given water depth and wind speed) and how are they used. My major is unrelated to physics.

I have been googling about this, and found some slides from the MIT's Ocean Engineering) where several complex wave spectral models (like Bretschneider or Jonswap models) are presented, and also found this question, which I think is closely related, however the answer seems to be the "Green's law"...

Could someone give me some advice on this?

Thanks in advice..

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The mechanism presented here is certainly the driving interaction: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/15582/… . Predicting the statistics of the waves requires a model for their decay and propagation, however, not just the instability that gets them going. But the order of magnitude is easy to estimate from just the form of the driving mechanism, which is the pressure difference set up by wind going over a sinusoidally varying surface. – Ron Maimon Dec 31 '11 at 12:48
Thanks for the replies! I will get a look at the links. – D T Jan 4 '12 at 2:19

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