Wave height, period and direction

[jwagemann]

Ocean waves have amplitudes (wave heights), direction, but also a wave length or a period. Waves with long wave length or period are the delight of surfers. So how best to highlight that?

[fwwwrrr]

Hi again.
I was just commenting on the related wave spectrum thread but I think all this wave data could be bundled in the same dataset? Like in a multidimensional NetCDF file. A "Wave" data-object with a number of parameters (or dimensions) is trivial to store in such a format and is easy to map in space and time.

[nguyenquangchien]

Ocean waves have amplitudes (wave heights), direction, but also a wave length or a period. Waves with long wave length or period are the delight of surfers. So how best to highlight that?

Just let the colour map denote the wave height and let a vector field denote the wave propagation velocity (the vector lengths represent speed). The wave period is proportional to this speed and the wavelength - to its square in the deep water. Of course, that is not a good approximation in continental shelves, but perhaps a set of depth contour lines can help improve the estimation.