Surf Infrasound at Makalawena and Polihale

To further our surf infrasound studies, two diverse and contrasting coastal environments were chosen. The shoreline of Makalawena beach on the island of Hawaii consists of mostly old lavas flow (rocky), while the shoreline of Polihale beach Kauai is entirely composed of sand. Results from these studies show the potential exists to use infrasound as a near real-time, relatively low-cost monitoring tool for near-shore ocean processes.

A recently published paper entitled "Infrasound from large surf" describes these two experiments in more detail. This paper establishes a clear relationship between breaking wave height and infrasonic amplitude. Further, it shows how both barreling waves and waves crashing against a rocky shoreline can both produce considerable infrasound. Available at: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL025085.shtml

Citation: Garcés, M., J. Aucan, D. Fee, P. Caron, M. Merrifield, R. Gibson, J. Bhattacharyya, and S. Shah (2006), Infrasound from large surf , Geophys. Res. Lett. , 33 , L05611, doi:10.1029/2005GL025085.

A second paper from the Polihale experiment, "Infrasonic estimation of surf period" focuses on extracting breaking wave period from infrasound. By examining the envelope of surf infrasound signals, it is possible to obtain the dominant period of the breaking waves from a single infrasound microphone. Available at: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL025086.shtml.

Citation: Aucan, J., D. Fee, and M. Garcés (2006), Infrasonic estimation of surf period , Geophys. Res. Lett. , 33 , L05612, doi:10.1029/2005GL025086.