In 2002, Pensacola Beach was identified by the United States Lifesaving Association as being the most hazardous beach in the continental United States for beach drowning by rip currents. Recent studies suggest that the rip currents at Pensacola Beach are associated with a transverse bar and rip morphology that develops with the migration of the bars and recovery of the beachface following an extreme storm. Combined with an alongshore variation in wave forcing by transverse ridges on the inner-shelf, the bar cycle (of bar response and recovery to extreme storms) is hypothesized to create both rip current hotspots and periods of rip activity. However, it is unknown at what stage, or stages, the bar cycle is associated with the formation of these hotspots and the greatest number of rips. To determine how the accretional rip hazard varies in response to the nearshore bar cycle, this thesis will quantify the alongshore variation in the nearshore bar morphology on Santa Rosa Island from 1951 to 2004. Aerial photographs and satellite images are collected for the study area and nearshore features are digitized in ArcGIS and evaluated using wavelet analysis. Specifically, a continuous wavelet transform is used to the identify times and locations when a transverse bar and rip morphology is present or is in the process of developing. The findings suggest that the rip-scale variation in bar morphology (~100-250m) is superimposed on an alongshore variation consistent with the scale of the transverse ridges (~1000m). From the outer bar to the shoreline, and as the bar migrates landward, the variation becomes increasingly dominated by the rip-scale variation. Hotspots of rip current activity were found consistently between years at Fort Pickens Gate, San Souci, Holiday Inn, Casino Beach, Avenida 18 and Portofino, as clusters of rip-scale variation.

Hurricanes are one of the primary threats to the Texas coastal environment and economy. They generate large wave and storm surges that have caused much damage on the Texas coast in the past. Understanding both the hydrodynamic processes that damage coastal habitats and hurricane hazard and risk are critical to preserve coastal vegetation and quantify its benefits to coastal storm protection. The goal of this project is to quantify the impact of wave attenuation and wave refraction as well as the development of coherent structures in marsh fringes and the formation of a rip current system over wetlands on storm protection. The 3D Shallow Water Wave Basin at Texas A&M University hosted a series of large-scale experiments considering an idealized wetland model to pursue this goal. Study of the marsh geometry of the Texas coast was done in order to scale the experiments to the size of the Haynes Laboratory 3D-Water Wave Basin using a Froude and a Reynolds scalings. Particularly, averaged size and idealized shape of marsh segments in the area of Dalehite Cove in Galveston Bay were considered. Three sets of different wave conditions and water levels were tested to approximate different intensities of storm surge. Identical tests with both vegetated and non-vegetated marshes were run to compare the influence of the vegetation in storm conditions, and three different spacings between marsh segments were tested. In the basin, normally incident regular waves were generated at three water circulation structures. Data analysis allows the determination of the impact of discontinuous marsh segments on wave attenuation and wave refraction. Coherent structures such as rip current and the circulation pattern were analyzed to study the change in the flow field during passage of the waves. The experimental measurements were able to describe the wave transformations over the marsh segments. The influence of coastal wetlands was identified to affect the hydrodynamic process and reduce the total wave energy which is dissipated and redistributed by vegetation. The presence of the mounds induced an important decrease in the wave height, in addition to the damping of the waves by the vegetation stems. The variation in spatial coverage of the wetland model has been shown to highly affect the flow dynamics by generating offshore directed flow in the channel and onshore directed flow on the marsh mounds. This experimental approach provides a further understanding of flow dynamics by waves and surge in wetlands, at a large scale.

The purpose of this research is to provide a better understanding of the physical and social aspects of rip currents in ocean areas that will lead to better forecasts, better governmental policies in beach areas, and ultimately to save lives. A rip current is a nearshore circulation in which breaking waves run up onto the beach then retreat rapidly in deeper channels back toward the sea. Rip currents pose a significant threat to beachgoers and can pull even the strongest swimmers out to sea. The primary factors associated with rip current formation on unarmored beaches are variations in the local beach bathymetry, wind-generated longshore waves of varying height, and lower tidal stages. The rationale for this study is highlighted when rip current deaths are put in context with deaths from other weather related deaths. The average number of rip current deaths per year in the United States is 46 and in the year 2010 rip currents were responsible for 64 deaths which was higher than the deaths associated with lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes and the cold winter during the year. The methodology followed for this study includes a review of demographics from over 500 rip current drowning reports along the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico coasts of the United States from 1994-2012. This research indicates that tourists are often victims, and rescuers can become the victims. For each state or sub-state area where rip current drownings are prevalent, an analysis of social aspects, beach areas, and associated ocean and weather patterns was conducted using averaged wind and pressure fields over wave generation areas, buoy data, and tide data. It is important to understand the evolution of these drowning events and seek solutions to mitigate the problem.

80% of all lifeguard related rescues along the beaches of northwest Florida are believed to be related to rip currents. A rip current is the strong flow of water, seaward extending from the beach to the breaker line. It has previously been shown that there are rip current hot spots at Pensacola Beach, forced by a ridge and swale topography offshore, but the annual evolution/behavior of these hotspots (i.e. location, size, frequency, and orientation) have not been examined in detail. Remote imagery from Casino Beach was rectified to a planar view in order to examine the rip channel characteristics. These characteristics were analyzed to determine variations and patterns on a daily, monthly, and seasonal basis and in relation to reset storms, wind and wave characteristics, and the beach states of Casino Beach in order to characterize the rip development and variation throughout a year. Beach states and rip configurations were impacted by many frontal storms and one tropical storm, which were classified as a reset storm when reconfigurations of the beach state and rips occurred. Given sufficient time between reset storms, the bar migrated onshore in a manner consistent with the Wright and Short (1984) model, transitioning from LBT, to RBB, and finally to TBR state. The lack of reset storms after March 2010 resulted in a large frequency of observed rip channels (64) between April and May. It is shown that these rip channels are clustered into 7 statistically significant groups based on their location alongshore at the 95 % confidence interval. It is argued that the rip channel clusters are a direct result of the wave forcing caused by the ridge and swale topography. This situation causes the bar to move onshore that without interruption of a reset storm will attach at certain locations creating a transverse bar and rip morphology. The bar appears to attach to the beach at consistent locations throughout the year creating similar rip locations and subsequently the rip clusters. The risk posed to beach users by these rip currents is concentrated in certain locations which are persistent throughout the year.

Laboratory experiments of rip current systems are performed in a wave basin with a bar and rip channel geometry at the Ocean Engineering Laboratory at the University of Delaware. The experiments include both in situ water level and velocity measurements and optical visualization of the flow field under a variety of normal-incident wave conditions. Digital video is used to record surface drifters moving through a rip current system. A method is presented that tracks these digitally-recorded drifters into long Lagrangian sequences. The laboratory measurements capture both an Eulerian and Lagrangian description of the rip current system. Time-averaged rip current properties are calculated and analyzed using both in situ and video measurements. From the video, Lagrangian velocities are computed with forward differencing of the low-pass filtered drifter tracks. Wave properties are also estimated using the orbital drifter motions and linear (Airy) wave theory. The effects of various wave conditions on the time-averaged rip current systems are investigated to show that wave height is a critical parameter. Measurements of circulation cells are obtained by spatially averaging the drifter track velocity measurements into a polar grid ranging from 0.25 m to 3.25 m from the center of the cell. Circulation cell features, such as the center of circulation and cell width, are calculated to characterize their response to various wave conditions. Spectral analyses are used to characterize the rip current pulsations in the experimental measurements. Three frequencies are found to be energetic in several of the experiments in the low frequency band: the wave group frequency, a lower frequency, and the interaction of the wave group and lower frequencies. Some experiments have significant energy at each of the three peaks, where others have only one or none. The lower frequency motions have also been found in the video measurements and attributed to rip meandering. Possible causes for the low-frequency pulsations, including wave basin seiching, circulation cell instabilities, and wave-current interaction, are discussed. This thesis adds to previous rip current studies by providing a spatially-large and time-varying perspective of rip current systems as a whole.

Simultaneous in-situ measurements of waves, currents, water depth, suspended sediment concentrations and bed profiles were made in a rip channel on Perranporth Beach, Cornwall, UK. Perranporth is a high energy beach (annual offshore Hs = 1.6 m) which is macro-tidal (mean spring range = 6.3 m) and the grain size is medium sand (D50 = 0.28 – 0.34 mm). It can be classified as a low tide bar – rip beach and exhibits a relatively flat inter-tidal zone with pronounced rhythmic low tide bar - rip morphology. Data were collected over two field campaigns, totalling 14 tidal cycles and including 27 occurrences of rip currents, in a range of offshore wave heights (Hs = 0.5 – 3 m). The in-situ measurements were supplemented with morphological beach surveys. Sediment samples were taken for grain size analysis. The rip current was found to be tidally modulated. The strongest rip flow (0.7 m/s) occurred at mid to low tide, when waves were breaking on the adjacent bar. Rip flow persisted when the bar had dried out at the lowest tidal elevations. The rip was observed to pulse at a very low frequency (VLF) with a period of 15 - 20 minutes, which was shown to be influenced by wave breaking on the adjacent bar. The rip was completely in-active at high tide. Bedforms were ubiquitous in the rip channel and occurred at all stages of the tide. Visual observations found bedforms to be orientated shore parallel. When the rip was active, mean bedform length and height was 1.45 m and 0.06 m respectively. The size and position of the bedforms in the nearshore suggested that they were best classified as megaripples. When the rip was not active, the mean bedform length and height was 1.09 m and 0.06 m respectively. In rip conditions, with typical mean offshore flow rates of > 0.3 m/s, the bedforms migrated in an offshore direction at a mean rate of 0.16 cm/min and a maximum rate of 4.6 cm/min. The associated mean bedform sediment transport rate was 0.0020 kg/m/s, with a maximum rate of 0.054 kg/m/s. In the rip, migration rates were correlated with offshore directed mean flow strength. In non-rip conditions, bedform migration was onshore directed with a mean rate of 0.09 cm/min and a maximum rate of = 2.2 cm/min. The associated mean bedform transport rate was 0.0015 kg/m/s, with a maximum rate of = 0.041 kg/m/s. The onshore bedform transport was correlated with incident wave skewness, and was weakly correlated with orbital velocity. Over a tidal cycle, the offshore directed bedform transport was only marginally larger in rip currents than when it was when onshore directed in non-rip conditions. Sediment suspension in the rip current was shown to be dependent on the presence of waves. Suspended sediment transport was dominated by the mean flux. The mean flux contributed > 70% of total suspended transport on 19 out of the 27 observed rip current occurrences. The net contribution of the oscillatory flux was small compared to the mean flux. Within the oscillatory component, a frequency domain partitioning routine showed that the VLF motion was an important mechanism for driving offshore directed sediment transport. This was balanced by onshore directed sediment transport at incident wave frequency of a similar magnitude. Depth integration showed that the mean total suspended sediment transport was in the range of 0.03 kg/m/s to 0.08 kg/m/s. At high tide, when the rip was inactive suspended sediment transport rates were minimal compared to when the rip was active. Bedform transport was (on average) 6% of the total suspended sediment transport in a rip current. The new results presented here show that rip currents make an important contribution to offshore directed sediment transport. The magnitudes of transport indicate that future improvements to morphology change models should include rip driven offshore sediment transport.

Rip currents are the most dangerous hazard at surf beaches. Rip currents in South Florida have previously not been studied. Beach profiles for three Florida beaches (Miami Beach, Lido Beach, Sarasota, and Pensacola Beach) and one Georgia beach (South Cumberland Island) were chosen for surveying because of their variable sand bar heights. Rip current hazard at each beach was assessed by lifeguard rip rescue and drowning statistics. A relationship was found between sand bar height, beach slope and rip current hazard. Rip current measurements in South Florida, which involved utilizing GPS drifters, laser rangefinder and drone-imaged fluorescent tracer dye, showed that the speed ranged from 0.1-0.5 m/s, which is fairly slow compared to such measurements undertaken in California and Australia. The effect of rip currents on swimmers was analyzed based on the drag force acting on swimmers and the power they generate to overcome the currents when swimming against them. The drag force and power increase quadratically and cubically, respectively, with the increase of rip current and swimming speeds. Hence, even rip currents of low velocity can be dangerous and swimming against the current should be avoided if possible. Strong rips in California have been shown to exhibit a circulatory pattern, which could bring a floater back to the safety of a shallow sand bar. Field measurements of rip currents in South Florida clearly defined the flow characteristics of a nearly straight-line current, sometimes deflected to the east-southeast. Therefore, the traditional approach of swimming left or right, parallel to the shore is the best escape strategy, but not against the longshore current if present. A logistic regression analysis was conducted to predict the occurrence of rip currents based on beach conditions. The logistic model showed that wave height, wave period and wind speed were statistically significant factors in rip generation. Rips were found to be most commonly generated by relatively small, non-threatening waves (e.g., 0.6 to 0.9m in height). These physical factors, along with social and safety considerations, pose a significant problem for coastal management.