This book attempts to summarise the current state of this knowledge and to
place this understanding into a common frame work. There are still many aspects
of wind waves which are not fully understood. A notable example being wave
breaking. Despite this, an impressive ability now exists to predict waves on both
global and regional scales. Indeed, it is the author's beUef that the most significant
source of error in deep water wave models is the driving wind. Further advances in our understanding of the physics of wave evolution will result in only marginal
improvements in the prediction capability. In finite depth regions, knowledge is
still relatively poor and further work is clearly required.