Distribution of Bubbles Near the Ocean Surface

A model is proposed for the number density of bubbles near the ocean surface when there is an active production of bubbles by entrainment in a breaking wind-wave field. It is argued that the total number density is directly proportional to the work done by the atmosphere on the ocean surface to cause the bubbling and inversely proportional to the volume of the largest cavities. A hypothesis that asserts that all possible configurations of bubble energy distributed with bubble size are equiprobable is shown to be equivalent to assuming that the bubble shattering rate is proportional to individual bubble area. The resulting Weibull distribution for bubble number density is shown to fit available data sets adequately. To account for the depth invariance of the observed maximum number density a scale-dependent but depth-invariant turbulent diffusivity is proposed.