Impact of sea breeze on the wind-seas off Goa, west coast of India

Abstract

After withdrawal of the Indian Summer Monsoon and until onset of the next monsoon, i.e. roughly during November-May, winds in the coastal region of India are dominated by sea breeze. It has an impact on the daily cycle of the sea state near the coast. The impact is quite significant when large scale winds are weak. During one such event, 1-15 April 1997, a Datawell directional waverider buoy was deployed in 23 m water depth off Goa, west coast of India. Twenty-minute averaged spectra, collected once every three hours, show that the spectrum of sea-breeze-related “wind-seas” peaked at 0.23 ± 0.05 Hz. These wind-seas were well separated from swells of frequencies less than 0.15 Hz. The TMA spectrum (Bouws et al., 1985) matched the observed seas spectra very well when the sea-breeze was active and the fetch corresponding to equilibrium spectrum was found to be 77±43 km during such occasions. We emphasize on the diurnal cycle of sea-breeze-related sea off the coast of Goa and write an equation for the energy of the seas as a function of the local wind.