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Article: Coastal seiches. (secondary peaks of tides)
- Article from:
- Oceanus
- Article date:
- March 22, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Coastal residents associate the sea with particular rhythms: the short, insistent lapping of small harbor waves, or the long beat of ocean swell rolling toward shore from distant storms at sea. The rhythms might be the coming and going of the tides; for some coastal dwellers, these have a daily cadence; for others, the rhythm has two beats each day (see Tides and Their Effects, page 27).
If we plot wave energy on a graph against the period of the waves that occur at a particular coastal location, we expect to see each of these familiar rhythms represented by an energy maximum; a broad plateau in the range from seconds to tens of seconds for wind-generated waves, and ...