FRACTAL PROPERTIES OF WHITECAPS

Images of a field of breaking waves over the ocean obtained using a li ne-scanner on an aircraft are analyzed for a possible fractal geometry . The cumulative probability function of the intensity is shown to be self-similar for sufficiently large intensities occupying about 10% of an imaged area. This structure is invariant to successive averaging o ver successively larger boxes. A box-counting technique was applied to images of one representative flight. The estimated fractal dimension decreases from about 2.25 for a 10% areal coverage to about 1.7 for 0. 1% coverage. It is concluded that the spatial distribution of the scat tered light from foam and whitecaps is not monofractal, but is instead multifractal.