Abstract
Long-term estimation of extreme wave height remains a key challenge because of the short duration of available wave data, and also because of the possible impact of climate variability on ocean waves. Here, we analyse storm-based statistics to obtain estimates of extreme wave height at locations in the northeast Atlantic and North Sea using the NORA10 wave hindcast (1958–2011), and use a 5 year sliding window to examine temporal variability. The decadal variability is correlated to the North Atlantic oscillation and other atmospheric modes, using a six-term predictor model incorporating the climate indices and their Hilbert transforms. This allows reconstruction of the historic extreme climate back to 1661, using a combination of known and proxy climate indices. Significant decadal variability primarily driven by the North Atlantic oscillation is observed, and this should be considered for the long-term survivability of offshore structures and marine renewable energy devices. The analysis on wave climate reconstruction reveals that the variation of the mean, 99th percentile and extreme wave climates over decadal time scales for locations close to the dominant storm tracks in the open North Atlantic are comparable, whereas the wave climates for the rest of the locations including the North Sea are rather different.
Highlights
Extreme wave climate is important for the design of offshore structures, marine operations and coastal defences
Long-term extrapolation of extreme wave height based on hindcast wave data is presented, using a POT technique for locations in the northeast Atlantic and the North Sea
The estimates of the extreme wave height using a simple exponential fit to the entire 54 years of record are consistent with the storm severity each location experienced
Summary
Extreme wave climate is important for the design of offshore structures, marine operations and coastal defences. Studies of the extreme wave climate have increased in number in recent years Both global and regional estimates of extreme significant wave height (Hs) values, as well as long-term trend analysis, have been produced [1,2,3,4,5]. We aim to tackle this question by seeking correlations between the variability of the extreme wave heights in the northeast Atlantic and the North Sea and large-scale atmospheric teleconnections. For this region, we include the NAO, and the two modes, which are the East Atlantic (EA) pattern, and the Scandinavian pattern (SCA). This study is a continuation of previous work by Taylor and co-workers [14,15] using earlier hindcast wave models, and Santo et al [12], who looked at annual mean wave power variability using the same hindcast wave model
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