Close Relationship Between Whitecapping‐Related Wave Energy Dissipation and Ambient Sound in the Open Ocean

Abstract Whitecapping is the dominant, but poorly understood, mechanism of ocean wave energy dissipation. The amount of wave energy lost due to whitecapping can only be estimated indirectly, from observations of related quantities. High uncertainties associated with observation‐based estimates hinder validation of whitecapping parameterizations for spectral wave models, making more‐accurate observational methods highly desirable. In this study we analyze time series of two fully independently obtained quantities from the deep‐ocean Station Papa: the power spectral density of ambient sound, and the wave energy dissipation computed from measured wave energy spectra and wind speeds according to three different parametrizations used in spectral wave models. We find very close relationship between and , hinting at the potential of acoustic methods for estimating wave energy dissipation. We also show that is sensitive to the shape of spectral tails, for example, Doppler‐shift related distortions of measured spectra.