Abstract
Long-term changes of wind-generated ocean waves have important consequences for marine engineering, coastal management, ship routing, and marine spatial planning. It is well-known that the multi-annual variability of wave parameters in the North Atlantic is tightly linked to natural fluctuations of the atmospheric circulation, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation. However, anthropogenic climate change is also expected to influence sea states over the long-term through the modification of atmospheric and ocean circulation and melting of sea ice. Due to the relatively short duration of historical sea state observations and the significant multi-decadal variability in the sea state signal, disentangling the anthropogenic signal from the natural variability is a challenging task. In this article, the literature on inter-annual to multi-decadal variability of sea states in the North Atlantic is reviewed using data from both observations and model reanalysis.
Highlights
It is well-established that the sea state displays variability on inter-annual to decadal timescales
This slow variability is due to the fluctuations of the atmospheric circulation, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, that modifies the trajectories of extra tropical storms in the North Atlantic (NA, a glossary of acronyms is given in Table 1) and the associated sea state
Because of the availability of long-term and historical measurements, seismic data could be a valuable source of sea state observations but have rarely been exploited until now because of the complex relationship between seismic data and sea states
Summary
It is well-established that the sea state displays variability on inter-annual to decadal timescales. The wind direction, the storm trajectory, and the presence of land or sea ice on the path of the storms all impact on the wave generation process Local effects, such as shoaling, refraction, diffraction, and wave–current interactions may modify the wave field along its propagation. Despite these difficulties, numerous studies, for example, [2,3,4] have established the possibility to statistically link the slow sea state variations to the slow atmospheric circulation variations, as we shall review in this article.
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