Dataset for Observations of Wave Energy Dissipation by Bottom Friction on Rocky Shores

This repositoy has the dataset for the scientific paper entitled Observations of Wave Energy Dissipation by Bottom Friction on Rocky Shores, accepted for publication in the Journal of Physical Oceanography (JPO). This work analysed an extensive dataset from in-situ instruments deployed as part of the 2022 experiment of the ROXSI project (ROcky shores eXperiments and SImulation). In-situ instruments were deployed for about 1 month at two rocky shores on the Monterey Peninsula, where most instruments were deployed between the shoreline and a bottom depth of ~15 m.

In particular, this work estimated sea-swell wave dissipation by bottom friction and the associated wave friction factors $f_e$. The observed $f_e$. typically varies between 1 and 10, and are amongst the largest friction factors observed in environments with rough seabeds, including coral reefs and rocky shores. The observations indicate large wave dissipation by bottom friction over a rough seabed.

This repository has 2 *.m files 6 compressed folders with data that are relavant for the paper. All the data is saved in .mat files generated with MATLAB. The code for processing the data is archived in a separate GitHub repository (Paper_WaveDissipation). For reproducibility, these 6 folders should be saved inside a directory called data, and saved alongside the content in the GitHub repository that contains the data processing code. The 6 folders within this data repository are

• bathymetry/ (~1.26 GB)
• level_1/ (~8.7 GB)
• level_2/ (~465 MB)
• level_3/ (~1.22 GB)
• level_4/ (~0.9 GB)
• level_5/ (~400 MB)

The bathymetry folder has ungridded and gridded bathymetry data. The other folders have measurements from pressure sensors (SoloD), ADCPs, and wave buoys (Spotters): level_1 has raw data (after basic quality control), level_2 has hourly wave statistics per instrument location, level_3 has similar data as level_2, but also includes data from all instrument sites in one file, level_4 has data including sea-swell bulk statistics, and level_5 has estimates of friction factor. For reproducing figures in the paper, level_1 folder is not required.

For an initial look at wave statistics, I recommend looking at the file ~/level_4/roxsi_data_L4.mat. Pressure-based statistics in this file have been corrected for an effective depth. The file ~/level_4/roxsi_datahp_L4.mat has pressure-based statistics computed with the local depth measuremed by the pressure sensor.

For estimates $f_e$, see ~/level_5/dataL5_withQC.mat. This file has two variables: pwdissipation and pwfetable. The former is a structure variable with timeseries for each pair of instruments, along with timeseries $f_e$, and several statistics. The variable pwfetable is a table where each row corresponds to a different pair of instruments. Both variables include bulk friction factors for each instrument pair.