What's the reason for the formation of waves in the ocean and not in lakes?

Question

I've heard that there's some connection with the effects of the moon. I want to get it crarified?

Answer 1

Large lakes like the Great Lakes do have waves !!

Answer 2

Actually waves are caused 99.9% by the wind - The reason you get waves which are so much larger on the ocean than on a lake is size - even on the great lakes (I live on the Shore of Lake Erie) we get waves, big ones of 10 or 15 feet during just the right storms - In the Ocean they get bigger, MUCH bigger (a recent German Sattelite Wave-height mapping showed 20 Waves over 30 Meters in height (about 100 Feet - or a ten story bldg) in the southern reaches (The area around Antarctica, which has no land all the way around the planet) - THere is nothing to slow them down so the wind makes GIANT waves (well, and there is also a bit of the Schroedinger Nonlinear Wave Equation out there that makes Killer Giants, too...)

So, it's all Wind.

As the wind sweeps across the surface, the wind pulls the surface along with it, but it's a liquid and all "Connected" so the water being pulled along creates a slight pressure differential behind it which draws water upwards, this begins a circular cycle of water motion which translates into Waves. Some waves, for no apparent reason, begin to take the energy from their neighbors, and these waves make the Killer Giant Waves, but it all starts with wind across the surface of the water.

Answer 3

Not in Lakes is an incorrect statement. There are waves in lakes maybe they are smaller than the ocean but the Great Lakes can have some pretty large waves. Maybe it is just the size of the body of water that effects the more consistent wave formation than in smaller lakes.

Answer 4

Waves are the product of the wind. The longer the distance they have to form the bigger the waves. Lakes have waves and in high winds they can be pretty big, even on small lakes.

The moon creates the tides, is that what you are thinking about?

Answer 5

You know waves ocur in the ocean so lets not dwell on that: Her is but one take on lakewave and I have included the web site.

Seiches: Standing waves cause much greater water displacements than surface waves and are therefore much more important in physical limnology. Standing waves are a phenomenon occurring in all lakes, but only in large basins we observe periodic rise and fall of the water surface. They are generally known as ‘seiches’. The seiches are free surface waves, governed by similar dynamics as short, wind generated waves. The principal ingredients in the wave dynamics are acceleration of the water particles and pressure gradients generated by displacement of the free surface and the force of gravity. The speed of these waves is C=ÖgH, where H is local water depth and g is the acceleration due to gravity. In large lakes the earth’s rotation is often important and may influence the motion in the lake. When the natural period of the oscillation is comparable to or greater than inertial period (12/sin j), the motions are affected by the earth’s rotation. The inertial period is dependent on the latitude (j) of the lake.

Storm surges: A sudden wind will produce not only oscillating seiches, but also cause the water surface to set up or tilt, more or less in opposition to the wind stress, and for the duration of the wind. These changes in water level observed in response to extremely vigorous wind forcing are known as storm surges. The largest change in water level is produced by the sum of storm surge and seiche. Storm surges are largest at the ends of an elongated basin, particularly when the long axis of the basin is aligned with the wind. In low-lying shores such events may cause flooding and increased erosion, with property damages and risk to human lives.

Topographic gyres: The wind drag is transferred from the surface downward by turbulent friction. Because of the closed basins, the transport of water through any cross-section averaged over the period of fundamental seiche is zero. Surface wind-driven flow must be balanced by a subsurface flow that is driven by pressure gradients. Close to the shore, wind drag is experienced all the way to the bottom, and this water is accelerated in the direction of the alongshore component of the wind. The balancing return transport occurs in the middle of the basin. Thus the forced, vertically averaged circulation takes the form of double gyre. The complicated vertical shear maintained during the active wind-forcing soon dies out, leaving this two-gyre motion behind. Within such cross-shore flows, the earth’s rotational force and pressure gradients do not balance and a wave like motion sets up. The two-gyre motion rotates counter-clockwise around the basin in the Northern Hemisphere. These motions are called topographic or vorticity waves. Unlike the influence of topography, the curl of the wind stress generates a single basin-wide gyre that can rotate around the basin, depending on the wind stress.

Answer 6

All of what is above is correct, but there is a lot more to waves. You can have the ripple effect, which is caused by any water displacement. In the ocean, you have the ocean floor which is constantly moving and underwater volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.