Derivation of design waves along the Indian coastline incorporating climate change

Abstract

The climate change induced by global warming has raised concerns over safety of coastal and offshore infrastructure. At several places in the world therefore studies are being made to know the effect of such change on design and operational ocean parameters. This paper is oriented in this direction and its aim is to specify future changes in the design significant wave height (Hs) over a series of locations along the Indian coastline. Thirty-nine sites were selected along the 7000-km-long Indian coast and design Hs with a return period of 100 years were calculated on the basis of past as well as future wave data of duration 27 years each. The simulation of waves was done by running a numerical wave model forced by wind derived from a modeling experiment called CORDEX. Fitting of data to Generalized Pareto Distribution gave the 100-year Hs at all 39 locations. The results indicate that the design Hs calculated on the basis of projected data was much higher than the one based on historical data. Such increase was as small as 5 % and as high as 58 % as per the location. The west coast sites showed a higher rise in the Hs value than the east ones.