Improving wave modeling performance by incorporating wave-generated turbulence dissipation and improved post-breaking spectrum

•Proposed a new wave-generated dissipation term and an improved post-breaking spectrum.•Reduced deviations, improved correlation coefficients.•Notable improvement for high significant wave heights (>4 or >6 m).•Comparison of two expressions for the same turbulence dissipation mechanism. The wave-generated turbulence dissipation term together with the improved post-breaking spectrum term proposed in this paper are incorporated in the MASNUM wave model as new dissipation terms. To compare the performance of these terms with the previous dissipation term in wave simulation, comprehensive validations of the simulated results were conducted against satellite data and NDBC buoy data on the significant wave heights. The results show that the incorporation of the wave-generated turbulence dissipation term with the improved post-breaking spectrum term significantly improves the model performance, the deviations are significantly reduced, and the correlation coefficients are effectively improved. In particular, there is a noticeable improvement in the simulation of significant wave heights exceeding 4 m or 6 m. In addition, a preliminary ideal experiment was conducted to compare the effect of the swell dissipation term proposed by Zieger et al. (2015) and the wave-generated turbulence dissipation term, and the results show that the dissipation magnitudes of the two terms are consistent to some extent.