Infrared Remote Sensing of Cooling Whitecap Foam to Quantify Wave Breaking and Aeration

The goal of this project was to develop and utilize a remote sensing technique to study bubble plume formation and associated wave breaking energy dissipation by exploiting the thermal signature of cooling residual foam left behind by the breaking process. In this experiment, we successfully relate the time from when breaking begins to when the residual foam starts to warm to provide a measure of the bubble plume decay time, which can be used to determine bubble characteristics and evaluate existing plume models to related to the wave energy dissipation rate. This project uses thermal infrared (IR) imagery and ancillary measurements to investigate and further establish these relationships. The resulting ability to remotely quantify bubble plume properties and energy dissipation due to wave breaking provides a new and transformative tool for investigating and understanding the air-sea interaction processes driven by wave breaking in the open ocean and the surf zone.