Estimates of the Breaking Strength Parameter for Individual Oceanic Whitecaps

Abstract The purpose of this study is to present the first estimates of the breaking strength parameter, , for individual oceanic whitecaps. This is achieved by combining the estimates of the dissipation rate per unit breaking crest length for these whitecaps reported in Callaghan et al. (2024, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023jc020193 ) with a measure of the whitecap breaking wave speed to implement the Duncan (1981, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1981.0127 ) relationship. The resulting values of span the range of previously reported laboratory values. Moreover, average values of are in excellent agreement with previous field‐derived average values using different approaches. The results suggest that making routine estimates of for individual whitecaps is now possible. This opens up new possibilities for how the fifth moment of Phillips' distribution of breaking wave crests can be better constrained to estimate the total dissipation rate of energy by oceanic whitecaps.