Coupled stochastic variational principles for multiscale surface gravity waves – Part I: theoretical framework

This paper develops a comprehensive stochastic variational framework for surface gravity waves. Starting from Luke's variational principle for irrotational, incompressible free-surface flow, we introduce a decomposition of the velocity potential into a large-scale deterministic component and a regularized stochastic noise term representing unresolved scales. A path-wise variational principle yields the stochastic counterparts of the Laplace, Bernoulli, and kinematic boundary conditions. To close the system, a second variational principle in expectation is formulated, providing evolution equations for the noise correlation functions. The resulting coupled system preserves the Hamiltonian structure of the Zakharov–Craig–Sulem formulation. We further analyze explicit solutions via WKB approximation and show that the noise correlation functions satisfy a Hamilton-Jacobi equation with ray-tracing dynamics. This framework provides a rigorous foundation for reduced stochastic models of ocean waves and for the kinetic theory developed in the companion paper.