eli5: Waves come in at New York, and waves come in at Europe. What happens in the middle?
In: Earth Science
Waves tend to go in the direction of the prevailing wind. The waves don’t actually move, the energy spins in a circular motion. The energy goes down in front of the wave and up in the tail of the wave.
The the faster the wind blows over the fetch ( distance and duration the wind blowing the same direction), the more energy builds up.
The amplitude of the waves increase as the depth of the water decrease because the circling energy starts pushing against the bottom.
When the depth of the water reaches 1.4x the height of the swell, the waves breaks.
Swells are measure by period in seconds and amplitude ( ft in USA ). The the larger the period the period the faster the wave energy moves, resulting in a bigger breaking wave.
The more quickly the depth of the water changes the more powerful the wave break. Look up the heavy deep water Reef breaks ( Jaws or Pipeline ) vs mushy beach break in the Gulf of Mexico.
A seismic wave (tsunami ) is very low amplitude but travels almost 2x as fast as a regular wave.
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