A method is proposed to recover the water-wave surface elevation from pressure data obtained at the bottom of the fluid. The new method requires the numerical solution of a nonlocal nonlinear equation relating the pressure and the surface elevation which is obtained from the Euler formulation of the water-wave problem without approximation. From this new equation, a variety of diff erent asymptotic formulas are derived. The nonlocal equation and the asymptotic formulas are compared with both numerical data and physical experiments.
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