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Comments on ““Bubbles Produced by Breaking Waves in Fresh and Salt Water””

Comments on ““Bubbles Produced by Breaking Waves in Fresh and Salt Water”” In a recent note in this journal Wu (2000) concluded that more air is entrained by a breaking wave in saltwater than in freshwater and that there is little difference in the sizes of the bubbles produced as a consequence of these breaking events in salt- and freshwater. Our earlier work on these questions, as reported in our papers cited by Wu, and in particular our more recent work with which Wu is apparently unfamiliar, leads us to just the opposite findings from those set forth in Wu's (2000) note. Wu, in discussing the findings of Monahan and Zietlow (1969) failed to report that we found in a set of simple pouring experiments ““relatively more bubbles with radii below 500 [[micrometers]] for sea water”” than for freshwater. With the passage of years, and the replacement of limited resolution film cameras with small video cameras (““bubble microscopes””) our more recent experiments involving ““tipping bucket”” simulations of breaking waves have confirmed that the concentration of bubbles with radii between 180 μμ m and 5 mm in saltwater, or even ““brackish”” water with a salinity of 20‰‰, is considerably more than one order of magnitude greater than in freshwater [[see, e.g., http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Physical Oceanography American Meteorological Society

Comments on ““Bubbles Produced by Breaking Waves in Fresh and Salt Water””

Monahan, Edward C.
Journal of Physical Oceanography , Volume 31 (7) – Aug 28, 2000
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Publisher
American Meteorological Society
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 American Meteorological Society
ISSN
1520-0485
DOI
10.1175/1520-0485(2001)031<1931:COBPBB>2.0.CO;2
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

In a recent note in this journal Wu (2000) concluded that more air is entrained by a breaking wave in saltwater than in freshwater and that there is little difference in the sizes of the bubbles produced as a consequence of these breaking events in salt- and freshwater. Our earlier work on these questions, as reported in our papers cited by Wu, and in particular our more recent work with which Wu is apparently unfamiliar, leads us to just the opposite findings from those set forth in Wu's (2000) note. Wu, in discussing the findings of Monahan and Zietlow (1969) failed to report that we found in a set of simple pouring experiments ““relatively more bubbles with radii below 500 [[micrometers]] for sea water”” than for freshwater. With the passage of years, and the replacement of limited resolution film cameras with small video cameras (““bubble microscopes””) our more recent experiments involving ““tipping bucket”” simulations of breaking waves have confirmed that the concentration of bubbles with radii between 180 μμ m and 5 mm in saltwater, or even ““brackish”” water with a salinity of 20‰‰, is considerably more than one order of magnitude greater than in freshwater [[see, e.g.,

Journal

Journal of Physical Oceanography – American Meteorological Society

Published: Aug 28, 2000

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