Geometric phases of water waves

Recently, Banner et al. (2014) highlighted a new fundamental property of open ocean wave groups, the so-called crest slowdown. For linear narrowband waves, this is related to the geometric and dynamical phase velocities $U_d$ and $U_g$ associated with the parallel transport through the principal fiber bundle of the wave motion with $\mathit{U}(1)$ symmetry. The theoretical predictions are shown to be in fair agreement with ocean field observations, from which the average crest speed $c=U_d+U_g$ with $c/U_d\approx0.8$ and $U_{g}/U_d\approx-0.2$.