Laboratory evidence of freak waves provoked by non-uniform bathymetry

We show experimental evidence that as relatively long unidirectional waves propagate over a sloping bottom, from a deeper to a shallower domain, there can be a local maximum of kurtosis and skewness close to the shallower side of the slope. We also show evidence that the probability of large wave envelope has a local maximum near the shallower side of the slope. We therefore anticipate that the probability of freak waves can have a local maximum near the shallower side of a slope for relatively long unidirectional waves. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4748346]