Abstract
An earlier discussion of the wind stress measurements of the 1986 HEXMAX experiment off the Dutch coast left some uncertainty about the actual relationship between the stress and the wave field. In this paper we try to find a more definitive answer by looking at the consequences for gradients of wind speed, stress and phase speed of the waves if we assume the Charnock coefficient to be either a constant or to have an inverse wave age dependence. It turns out that both assumptions have a wind speed range where they produce coherent results, but that they break down when the wave length exceeds a value that is related to the water depth.
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Oost, W.A. The KNMI HEXMAX stress data – a reanalysis. Boundary-Layer Meteorology 86, 447–468 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1000824918910
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1000824918910