Self-similarity of near-breaking short gravity wind waves

We show that the asymmetric profiles of the near-breaking wind waves observed in a large wind-wave tank do not depend on the wave scale. The experiments were performed for wind-generated waves of wavelength increasing with fetch. The wave crests just prior to breaking exhibit steep slopes exceeding 0.6 at the front and much smaller but remarkably constant slope at the rear. The statistics of wave geometric properties, such as the along-wind crest-slope distribution or the wavefront steepness, is found to be scale invariant. This implies that the shape of the near-breaking wind waves is self-similar. Similar experiments with paddle-generated waves amplified by wind reveal the same scale-independent features. These results suggest a certain universality of the underlying physical mechanisms leading to breaking for wave fields in equilibrium with wind.