Energy dissipation rates during ocean wave breaking are estimated from high-resolution profiles of turbulent velocities collected within 1 m of the surface.The velocity profiles are obtained from a pulse-coherent acoustic Doppler sonar on a wave-following platform, termed a Surface Wave Instrument Float with Tracking, or "SWIFT", and the dissipation rates are estimated from the structure function of the velocity profiles. The purpose of the SWIFT is to maintain a constant range to the time-varying surface and thereby observe the turbulence in breaking crests (i.e., above the mean still water level). The Lagrangian quality is also useful to pre-filter wave orbital motions and mean currents from the velocity measurements, which are limited in magnitude by phase-wrapping in the coherent Doppler processing. Field testing and examples from both offshore whitecaps and nearshore surf breaking are presented. Dissipation is elevated (up to 10^-3 m² s^-3) during strong breaking conditions, which are confirmed using surface videos recorded onboard the SWIFT. Although some velocity contamination is present from platform tilting and heaving, the structure of the velocity profiles is dominated by a turbulent cascade of eddies (i.e., the inertial sub-range). The noise, or uncertainty, in the dissipation estimates is shown to be normally distributed and uncorrelated with platform motion. Aggregated SWIFT measurements are shown to be useful in mapping wave breaking dissipation in space and time.

A Fourier-based method is presented to process video observations of water waves and calculate the speed distribution of breaking crest lengths. The method has increased efficiency and robust statistics compared with conventional algorithms that assemble distributions from tracking individual crests in the time domain. The method is tested using field observations (video images of whitecaps) of fetch-limited breaking waves during case studies with low (6.7 m s^-1), moderate (8.5 m s^-1), and high (12.6 m s^-1) wind speeds. The method gives distributions consistent with conventional algorithms, including breaking rates that are consistent with direct observations. Results are applied to obtain remote estimates of the energy dissipation associated with wave breaking.

Energy dissipation by breaking water waves is quantified indirectly using remote observations (digital video recordings) and directly using in situ observations (acoustic Doppler velocity profiles). The analysis is the first validation using field data to test the Duncan-Phillips formulation relating energy dissipation to the spectral distribution of whitecap speeds and lengths. Energy dissipation estimates are in agreement over two orders of magnitude, and demonstrate a promising method for routine observation of wave breaking dynamics. Breaking statistics are partitioned into contributions from waves at the peak of the wave-height spectrum and waves at higher frequencies in the spectrum. Peak waves are found to be only 10% of the total breaking rate, however peak waves contribute up to 75% of the total dissipation rate. In addition, breaking statistics are found to depend on the peak wave steepness and the energy input by the wind.