scholarly journals Projected 21st century changes in extreme wind-wave events

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (24) ◽  
pp. eaaz7295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Meucci ◽  
Ian R. Young ◽  
Mark Hemer ◽  
Ebru Kirezci ◽  
Roshanka Ranasinghe
Keyword(s):  
Wave Height ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Significant Wave Height ◽  
High Latitudes ◽  
Extreme Wave ◽  
Significant Wave ◽  
Statistical Confidence ◽  
The North ◽  
Wave Conditions ◽  
Projected Changes

We describe an innovative approach to estimate global changes in extreme wave conditions by 2100, as a result of projected climate change. We generate a synthetic dataset from an ensemble of wave models forced by independent climate simulation winds, enhancing statistical confidence associated with projected changes in extreme wave conditions. Under two IPCC representative greenhouse gas emission scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), we find that the magnitude of a 1 in 100-year significant wave height (Hs) event increases by 5 to 15% over the Southern Ocean by the end of the 21st century, compared to the 1979–2005 period. The North Atlantic shows a decrease at low to mid latitudes (≈5 to 15%) and an increase at high latitudes (≈10%). The extreme significant wave height in the North Pacific increases at high latitudes by 5 to 10%. The ensemble approach used here allows statistical confidence in projected changes of extremes.

scholarly journals Projected 21st Century changes in extreme wind-wave events

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Meucci
Keyword(s):  
Wave Height ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Wind Wave ◽  
Ocean Waves ◽  
Extreme Value Analysis ◽  
High Latitudes ◽  
Extreme Wave ◽  
Value Analysis ◽  
The North ◽  
Uncertainty Estimates

<p>Extreme ocean waves shape world coastlines and significantly impact offshore operations. Climate change may further exacerbate these effects increasing losses in human lives and economic activities. Studies generally agree on the trends in the mean values, yet there is no consensus on the extreme events, and whether their magnitude and/or frequency are changing. The present work applies an innovative extreme value analysis approach to a multi-model ensemble wind-wave climate dataset, derived from seven global climate models, to evaluate projected extreme wave height changes towards the end of the 21st century. Under two greenhouse gas emission scenarios, we find that at the end of the 21st century, the one in 100-year wave height event increases across the scenarios by 5 to 15 % over the Southern Ocean. The North Atlantic shows a decrease at low to mid-latitudes (5 to 15 %) and an increase at the high latitudes (10 %). The extreme wave heights in the North Pacific increase at the high latitudes by 5 to 10 %. The present work suggests that pooling an ensemble of future projected ocean storms from different GCMs might significantly improve uncertainty estimates connected to future coastal and offshore wave extremes, thereby improving climate adaptation strategies.</p>

scholarly journals Projected changes in significant wave height toward the end of the 21st century: Northeast Atlantic

2017 ◽  
Vol 122 (4) ◽  
pp. 3394-3403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ole Johan Aarnes ◽  
Magnar Reistad ◽  
Øyvind Breivik ◽  
Elzbieta Bitner-Gregersen ◽  
Lars Ingolf Eide ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Wave Height ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Significant Wave Height ◽  
Northeast Atlantic ◽  
Significant Wave ◽  
Projected Changes

Evolution of the Extreme Wave Region in the North Atlantic Using a 23 Year Hindcast

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Ponce de León ◽  
João H. Bettencourt ◽  
Joseph Brennan ◽  
Frederic Dias
Keyword(s):  
Wave Height ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Significant Wave Height ◽  
Extreme Values ◽  
Extreme Wave ◽  
North Atlantic Region ◽  
Atlantic Region ◽  
Significant Wave ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

The IOWAGA data base for the North Atlantic region was used to identify the region where extreme values of significant wave height are more likely to occur. The IOWAGA database [1] was obtained from the WAVEWATCH III model [2] hindcast using the CFSR (Climate Forecast System Reanalysis) from NOAA [3,4]. The period of the study covers 1990 up to 2012 (23 years). The variability of the significant wave height was assessed by computing return periods for sea storms where the significant wave height exceeds a given threshold. The return periods of sea storms where the Hs exceeds extreme values for the north Atlantic region were computed allowing for the identification of the extreme wave regions which show that extreme waves are more likely to occur in the storm track regions of the tropical and extratropical north Atlantic cyclones.

Comparison of Bivariate Models of the Distribution of Significant Wave Height and Peak Wave Period

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catarina S. Soares ◽  
C. Guedes Soares
Keyword(s):  
Wave Height ◽  
Significant Wave Height ◽  
Bivariate Normal Distribution ◽  
Wave Period ◽  
Peak Period ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Significant Wave ◽  
The North ◽  
Bivariate Models ◽  
The North Sea

This paper presents the results of a comparison of the fit of three bivariate models to a set of 14 years of significant wave height and peak wave period data from the North Sea. One of the methods defines the joint distribution from a marginal distribution of significant wave height and a set of distributions of peak period conditional on significant wave height. Other method applies the Plackett model to the data and the third one applies the Box-Cox transformation to the data in order to make it approximately normal and then fits a bivariate normal distribution to the transformed data set. It is shown that all methods provide a good fit but each one have its own strengths and weaknesses, being the choice dependent on the data available and applications in mind.

Traffic on the Great Lakes and New Labrador Developments

1968 ◽  
Vol 5 (04) ◽  
pp. 347-373
Author(s):  
Robert B. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Great Lakes ◽  
Wave Height ◽  
Significant Wave Height ◽  
Design Criteria ◽  
Severe Storm ◽  
Significant Wave ◽  
Hood Canal ◽  
Floating Bridge ◽  
Wave Conditions

On 13 February 1979, the entire west span of the Hood Canal Floating Bridge sank under the action of a very severe storm. Although the significant wave height was estimated as high as 4.7 feet, wind and wave conditions during the storm were well within the design criteria of the bridge.

Comparison Between a Fatigue Model for Voyage Planning and Measurements of a Container Vessel

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wengang Mao ◽  
Jonas W. Ringsberg ◽  
Igor Rychlik ◽  
Gaute Storhaug
Keyword(s):  
Fatigue Damage ◽  
Wave Height ◽  
Significant Wave Height ◽  
Route Planning ◽  
Estimation Model ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Significant Wave ◽  
The North ◽  
Fatigue Damage Accumulation ◽  
Fatigue Model

This paper presents results from an ongoing research project which aims at developing a numerical tool for route planning of container ships. The objective with the tool is to be able to schedule a route that causes minimum fatigue damage to a vessel before it leaves port. Therefore a new simple fatigue estimation model, only using encountered significant wave height, is proposed for predicting fatigue accumulation of a vessel during a voyage. The formulation of the model is developed based on narrow-band approximation. The significant response height hs, is shown to have a linear relationship with its encountered significant wave height Hs. The zero up-crossing response frequency fz, is represented as the corresponding encountered wave frequency and is expressed as a function of Hs. The capacity and accuracy of the model is illustrated by application on one container vessel’s fatigue damage accumulation, for different voyages, operating in the North Atlantic during 2008. For this vessel, all the necessary data needed in the fatigue model, and for verification of it, was obtained by measurements. The results from the proposed fatigue model are compared with the well-known and accurate rain-flow estimation. The conclusion is that the estimations made using the current fatigue model agree well with the rain-flow method for almost all of the voyages.

Uncertainties in Extreme Wave Height Estimates for Hurricane-Dominated Regions

2007 ◽  
Vol 129 (4) ◽  
pp. 300-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Jonathan ◽  
Kevin Ewans
Keyword(s):  
Wave Height ◽  
Significant Wave Height ◽  
Small Data ◽  
Extreme Wave ◽  
Significant Wave ◽  
Wave Characteristics ◽  
Height Estimates ◽  
Wave Heights ◽  
Using Data ◽  
High Percentile

Inherent uncertainties in estimation of extreme wave heights in hurricane-dominated regions are explored using data from the GOMOS Gulf of Mexico hindcast for 1900–2005. In particular, the effect of combining correlated values from a neighborhood of 72 grid locations on extreme wave height estimation is quantified. We show that, based on small data samples, extreme wave heights are underestimated and site averaging usually improves estimates. We present a bootstrapping approach to evaluate uncertainty in extreme wave height estimates. We also argue in favor of modeling supplementary indicators for extreme wave characteristics, such as a high percentile (95%) of the distribution of 100-year significant wave height, in addition to its most probable value, especially for environments where the distribution of 100-year significant wave height is strongly skewed.

scholarly journals Variability of the Winter Wind Waves and Swell in the North Atlantic and North Pacific as Revealed by the Voluntary Observing Ship Data

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (21) ◽  
pp. 5667-5685 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergey K. Gulev ◽  
Vika Grigorieva
Keyword(s):  
Interannual Variability ◽  
Wave Height ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North Pacific ◽  
Significant Wave Height ◽  
Wind Wave ◽  
Significant Wave ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Wind Sea

Abstract This paper analyses secular changes and interannual variability in the wind wave, swell, and significant wave height (SWH) characteristics over the North Atlantic and North Pacific on the basis of wind wave climatology derived from the visual wave observations of voluntary observing ship (VOS) officers. These data are available from the International Comprehensive Ocean–Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) collection of surface meteorological observations for 1958–2002, but require much more complicated preprocessing than standard meteorological variables such as sea level pressure, temperature, and wind. Visual VOS data allow for separate analysis of changes in wind sea and swell, as well as in significant wave height, which has been derived from wind sea and swell estimates. In both North Atlantic and North Pacific midlatitudes winter significant wave height shows a secular increase from 10 to 40 cm decade−1 during the last 45 yr. However, in the North Atlantic the patterns of trend changes for wind sea and swell are quite different from each other, showing opposite signs of changes in the northeast Atlantic. Trend patterns of wind sea, swell, and SWH in the North Pacific are more consistent with each other. Qualitatively the same conclusions hold for the analysis of interannual variability whose leading modes demonstrate noticeable differences for wind sea and swell. Statistical analysis shows that variability in wind sea is closely associated with the local wind speed, while swell changes can be driven by the variations in the cyclone counts, implying the importance of forcing frequency for the resulting changes in significant wave height. This mechanism of differences in variability patterns of wind sea and swell is likely more realistic than the northeastward propagation of swells from the regions from which the wind sea signal originates.

scholarly journals Projected sea level rise and changes in extreme storm surge and wave events during the 21st century in the region of Singapore

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 2955-3001
Author(s):  
H. Cannaby ◽  
M. D. Palmer ◽  
T. Howard ◽  
L. Bricheno ◽  
D. Calvert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Wave Height ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Significant Wave Height ◽  
Quantitative Assessment ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Mean Sea Level ◽  
Significant Wave

Abstract. Singapore is an island state with considerable population, industries, commerce and transport located in coastal areas at elevations less than 2 m making it vulnerable to sea-level rise. Mitigation against future inundation events requires a quantitative assessment of risk. To address this need, regional projections of changes in (i) long-term mean sea level and (ii) the frequency of extreme storm surge and wave events have been combined to explore potential changes to coastal flood risk over the 21st century. Local changes in time mean sea level were evaluated using the process-based climate model data and methods presented in the IPCC AR5. Regional surge and wave solutions extending from 1980 to 2100 were generated using ~ 12 km resolution surge (Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean – NEMO) and wave (WaveWatchIII) models. Ocean simulations were forced by output from a selection of four downscaled (~ 12 km resolution) atmospheric models, forced at the lateral boundaries by global climate model simulations generated for the IPCC AR5. Long-term trends in skew surge and significant wave height were then assessed using a generalised extreme value model, fit to the largest modelled events each year. An additional atmospheric solution downscaled from the ERA-Interim global reanalysis was used to force historical ocean model simulations extending from 1980–2010, enabling a quantitative assessment of model skill. Simulated historical sea surface height and significant wave height time series were compared to tide gauge data and satellite altimetry data respectively. Central estimates of the long-term mean sea level rise at Singapore by 2100 were projected to be 0.52 m (0.74 m) under the RCP 4.5 (8.5) scenarios respectively. Trends in surge and significant wave height 2 year return levels were found to be statistically insignificant and/or physically very small under the more severe RCP8.5 scenario. We conclude that changes to long-term mean sea level constitute the dominant signal of change to the projected inundation risk for Singapore during the 21st century. We note that the largest recorded surge residual in the Singapore Strait of ~ 84 cm lies between the central and upper estimates of sea level rise by 2100, highlighting the vulnerability of the region.

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