Increasing trends in spectral peak energy and period in a semi-closed sea

Abstract

This study aims to investigate long-term trends in the Black Sea's spectral wave peak energy and periods. Improved Visualization of the Innovative Trend Analysis and the Mann-Kendal methods was applied to the maximum and mean spectral peak energies and peak periods between 1979 and 2020. Long-term spectral data are obtained from the ERA5 reanalysis and two spectral wave models, SWAN and WWIII. The innovative trend analysis method has the particularity to examine trends in higher and lower value categories. Studies of long-term changes in spectral wave characteristics are rare, and trends in spectral peak parameters are evaluated in this study for the first time in the Black Sea. It was detected that both spectral peak energies and peak periods tend to increase predominantly over most of the time scales. Furthermore, while the change rates for peak energies do not exceed 40% annually and seasonally, change rates exceeding 100% are observed on a monthly basis. Besides, the change rates of the peak periods vary in the ±5% band and usually do not exceed 15%. Moreover, despite a few differences, trend analysis results obtained using SWAN and WWIII models were close to the global ERA5 results. The results may provide insight into the design and durable development of coastal and marine structures as well as the evaluation of wave climate change based on spectral wave data.