This article is about an offshore current under all near-shore waves. It is not to be confused with
Rip current.
In
physical oceanography, undertow is the
undercurrent that moves offshore while
waves approach the shore. Undertow is a natural and universal feature for almost any large
body of water; it is a return flow compensating for the onshore-directed average transport of water by the waves in the zone above the
wave troughs. The undertow's
flow velocities are generally strongest in the
surf zone, where the water is shallow and the waves are high due to
shoaling.[1]
In popular usage, the word undertow is often misapplied to
rip currents.[2] An undertow occurs everywhere underneath shore-approaching waves, whereas rip currents are localized narrow offshore currents occurring at certain locations along the coast.[3]
Oceanography
An "undertow" is a steady, offshore-directed compensation flow, which occurs below waves near the shore. Physically, nearshore, the wave-induced
mass flux between
wave crest and
trough is onshore directed. This mass transport is localized in the upper part of the
water column, i.e. above the
wave troughs. To compensate for the amount of water being transported towards the shore, a second-order (i.e. proportional to the
wave heightsquared), offshore-directed mean current takes place in the lower section of the water column. This flow – the undertow – affects the nearshore waves everywhere, unlike rip currents localized at certain positions along the shore.[4]
The term undertow is used in scientific coastal oceanography papers.[5][6][7] The distribution of
flow velocities in the undertow over the water column is important as it strongly influences the on- or offshore
transport of sediment. Outside the surf zone there is a
near-bed onshore-directed sediment transport induced by
Stokes drift and skewed-asymmetric wave transport. In the surf zone, strong undertow generates a near-bed offshore sediment transport. These antagonistic flows may lead to
sand bar formation where the flows converge near the
wave breaking point, or in the wave breaking zone.[5][6][7][8]
Similarly,
Longuet Higgins showed in 1975 that – for the common situation of zero mass flux towards the shore (i.e.
Stokes' second definition of wave celerity) – normal-incident periodic waves produce a depth- and time-averaged undertow velocity:[10]
with the mean water depth and the fluid
density. The positive flow direction of is in the wave propagation direction.
with the total energy density of the wave, integrated over depth and averaged over horizontal space. Since in general the potential energy is much easier to measure than the kinetic energy, the wave energy is approximately (with the
wave height). So
For irregular waves the required wave height is the
root-mean-square wave height with the
standard deviation of the free-surface elevation.[11]
The potential energy is and
The distribution of the undertow velocity over the water depth is a topic of ongoing research.[5][6][7]
In contrast to undertow, rip currents are responsible for the great majority of drownings close to beaches. When a swimmer enters a rip current, it starts to carry them offshore. The swimmer can exit the rip current by swimming at right angles to the flow, parallel to the shore, or by simply treading water or floating until the rip releases them. However, drowning can occur when swimmers exhaust themselves by trying unsuccessfully to swim directly against the flow of a rip.
A rip current is a horizontal current. Rip currents do not pull people under the water—they pull people away from shore. Drowning deaths occur when people pulled offshore are unable to keep themselves afloat and swim to shore. This may be due to any combination of fear, panic, exhaustion, or lack of swimming skills.
In some regions, rip currents are referred to by other, incorrect terms such as "rip tides" and "undertow". We encourage exclusive use of the correct term—rip currents. Use of other terms may confuse people and negatively impact public education efforts.[2]
^Lentz, S.J.; Fewings, M.; Howd, P.; Fredericks, J.; Hathaway, K. (2008), "Observations and a Model of Undertow over the Inner Continental Shelf", Journal of Physical Oceanography, 38 (11): 2341–2357,
Bibcode:
2008JPO....38.2341L,
doi:
10.1175/2008JPO3986.1,
hdl:1912/4067
^
abcGarcez Faria, A.F.; Thornton, E.B.; Lippman, T.C.; Stanton, T.P. (2000), "Undertow over a barred beach", Journal of Geophysical Research, 105 (C7): 16, 999–17, 010,
Bibcode:
2000JGR...10516999F,
doi:10.1029/2000JC900084