Sack Lunch Seminar (SLS)

I will discuss laboratory experiments on randomized surface
waves propagating over variable bathymetry. The experiments show that
an abrupt depth change can qualitatively alter wave statistics,
transforming an initially Gaussian wave field into a highly skewed
one. The altered wave field conforms closely to a gamma distribution,
which offers a simple way to estimate statistical quantities such as
skewness or kurtosis. Compared to Gaussian, the relatively slow decay
of the gamma distribution indicates an elevated level of extreme
events, i.e. rogue waves. In our experiments, the probability of a
rogue wave can be up to 50 times greater than would be expected from
normal statistics.