Freak waves in weakly nonlinear unidirectional wave trains over a sloping bottom in shallow water

Using a Boussinesq model with improved linear dispersion, we show numerical evidence that bottom non-uniformity can provoke significantly increased probability of freak waves as a wave field propagates into shallower water, in agreement with recent experimental results [K. Trulsen, H. Zeng, and O. Gramstad, Laboratory evidence of freak waves provoked by non-uniform bathymetry, Phys. Fluids 24, 097101 (2012)]. Increased values of skewness, kurtosis, and probability of freak waves can be found on the shallower side of a bottom slope, with a maximum close to the end of the slope. The increased probability of freak waves is typically seen to endure some distance into the shallower domain, before it decreases and reaches a stable value depending on the depth. The maxima of the statistical parameters are observed both in the case where there is a region of constant depth after the slope, and in the case where the uphill slope is immediately followed by a downhill slope. In the case that waves propagate over a slope from shallower to deeper water, however, we do not find any increase in freak wave occurrence. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.