scholarly journals Trends and variability of ocean waves under RCP8.5 emission scenario in the Mediterranean Sea

2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco De Leo ◽  
Giovanni Besio ◽  
Lorenzo Mentaschi

AbstractWind-generated ocean waves are key inputs for several studies and applications, both near the coast (coastal vulnerability assessment, coastal structures design, harbor operativity) and off-shore (a.o. oil and gas production, ship routes, and navigation safety). As such, the evaluation of trends in future wave climate is fundamental for the development of efficient policies in the framework of climate change adaptation and mitigation measures. This study focuses on the Mediterranean Sea, an area of primary interest, since it plays a crucial role in the worldwide maritime transport and it is highly populated along all its coasts. We perform an analysis of wave climate changes using an ensemble of 7 models under emission scenario RCP8.5, over the entire Mediterranean basin. Future projections of wave climate and their variability are analyzed taking into account annual statistics of wave parameters, such as significant wave height, mean period, and mean direction. The results show, on average, a decreasing trend of significant wave height and mean period, while the wave directions may be characterized by a slight eastward shift.

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 13-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Lionello ◽  
M. B. Galati

Abstract. This study analyzes the link between the SWH (Significant Wave Height) distribution in the Mediterranean Sea during the second half of the 20th century and the Northern Hemisphere SLP (Sea Level Pressure) teleconnection patterns. The SWH distribution is computed using the WAM (WAve Model) forced by the surface wind fields provided by the ERA-40 reanalysis for the period 1958–2001. The time series of mid-latitude teleconnection patterns are downloaded from the NOAA web site. This study shows that several mid-latitude patterns are linked to the SWH field in the Mediterranean, especially in its western part during the cold season: East Atlantic Pattern (EA), Scandinavian Pattern (SCA), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), East Atlantic/West Russia Pattern (EA/WR) and East Pacific/ North Pacific Pattern (EP/NP). Though the East Atlantic pattern exerts the largest influence, it is not sufficient to characterize the dominant variability. NAO, though relevant, has an effect smaller than EA and comparable to other patterns. Some link results from possibly spurious structures. Patterns which have a very different global structure are associated to similar spatial features of the wave variability in the Mediterranean Sea. These two problems are, admittedly, shortcomings of this analysis, which shows the complexity of the response of the Mediterranean SWH to global scale SLP teleconnection patterns.


Climate ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 2
Author(s):  
Flora E. Karathanasi ◽  
Takvor H. Soukissian ◽  
Daniel R. Hayes

The investigation of wave climate is of primary concern for the successful implementation of offshore aquaculture systems as waves can cause significant loads on them. Up until now, site selection and design (or selection) of offshore cage system structures on extended sea areas do not seem to follow any specific guidelines. This paper presents a novel methodology for the identification of favorable sites for offshore aquaculture development in an extended sea area based on two important technical factors: (i) the detailed characterization of the wave climate, and (ii) the water depth. Long-term statistics of the significant wave height, peak wave period, and wave steepness are estimated on an annual and monthly temporal scale, along with variability measures. Extreme value analysis is applied to estimate the design values and associated return periods of the significant wave height; structures should be designed based on this data, to avoid partial or total failure. The Eastern Mediterranean Sea is selected as a case study, and long-term time series of wave spectral parameters from the ERA5 dataset are utilized. Based on the obtained results, the most favorable areas for offshore aquaculture installations have been identified.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 195
Author(s):  
He Wang ◽  
Jingsong Yang ◽  
Jianhua Zhu ◽  
Lin Ren ◽  
Yahao Liu ◽  
...  

Sea state estimation from wide-swath and frequent-revisit scatterometers, which are providing ocean winds in the routine, is an attractive challenge. In this study, state-of-the-art deep learning technology is successfully adopted to develop an algorithm for deriving significant wave height from Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) aboard MetOp-A. By collocating three years (2016–2018) of ASCAT measurements and WaveWatch III sea state hindcasts at a global scale, huge amount data points (>8 million) were employed to train the multi-hidden-layer deep learning model, which has been established to map the inputs of thirteen sea state related ASCAT observables into the wave heights. The ASCAT significant wave height estimates were validated against hindcast dataset independent on training, showing good consistency in terms of root mean square error of 0.5 m under moderate sea condition (1.0–5.0 m). Additionally, reasonable agreement is also found between ASCAT derived wave heights and buoy observations from National Data Buoy Center for the proposed algorithm. Results are further discussed with respect to sea state maturity, radar incidence angle along with the limitations of the model. Our work demonstrates the capability of scatterometers for monitoring sea state, thus would advance the use of scatterometers, which were originally designed for winds, in studies of ocean waves.


Author(s):  
Céline Drouet ◽  
Nicolas Cellier ◽  
Jérémie Raymond ◽  
Denis Martigny

In-service monitoring can help to increase safety of ships especially regarding the fatigue assessment. For this purpose, it is compulsory to know the environmental conditions encountered: wind, but also the full directional wave spectrum. During the EU TULCS project, a full scale measurements campaign has been conducted onboard the CMA-CGM 13200 TEU container ship Rigoletto. She has been instrumented to measure deformation of the ship as well as the sea state encountered during its trip. This paper will focus on the sea state estimation. Three systems have been installed to estimate the sea state encountered by the Rigoletto: An X-band radar from Ocean Waves with WAMOS® system and two altimetric wave radars from RADAC®. Nevertheless, the measured significant wave height can be disturbed by several external elements like bow waves, sprays, sea surface ripples, etc… Furthermore, ship motions are also measured and can provide another estimation of the significant wave height using a specific algorithm developed by DCNS Research for the TULCS project. As all those estimations are inherently different, it is necessary to make a fusion of those data to provide a single estimation (“best estimate”) of the significant wave height. This paper will present the data fusion process developed for TULCS and show some first validation results.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Bolrão ◽  
Co Tran ◽  
Miguel Lima ◽  
Sheroze Sheriffdeen ◽  
Diogo Rodrigues ◽  
...  

<p>The most pervasive seismic signal recorded on our planet – microseismic ambient noise -results from the coupling of energy between atmosphere, oceans and solid Earth. Because it carries information on ocean waves (source), the microseismic wavefield can be advantageously used to image ocean storms. This imaging is of interest both to climate studies – by extending the record of oceanic activity back into the early instrumental seismic record – and to real-time monitoring – where real-time seismic data can potentially be used to complement the spatially dense but temporally sparse satellite meteorological data.<br>In our work, we develop empirical transfer functions between seismic observations and ocean activity observations, in particular, significant wave height. We employ three different approaches: 1) The approach of Ferretti et al (2013), who compute a seismic significant wave height and invert only for the empirical conversion parameters between oceanic and seismic significant wave heights; 2) The classical approach of Bromirski et al (1999), who computed an empirical transfer function between ground-motion recorded at a coastal seismic station and significant wave height measured at a nearby ocean buoy; and 3) A novel recurrent neural-network (RNN) approach to infer significant wave height from seismic data. <br>We apply the three approaches to seismic and ocean buoy data recorded in the east coast of the United States. All three approaches are able to successfully predict ocean significant wave height from the seismic data. We compare the three approaches in terms of accuracy, computational effort and robustness. In addition, we investigate the regimes where each approach works best.  The results show that the RNN approach is able to predict well the significant wave height recorded at the buoy. The prediction is improved if several nearby seismic stations are used rather than just one. <br>This work is supported by FCT through projects UIDB/50019/2020 – IDL and UTAP-EXPL/EAC/0056/2017 - STORM.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 1039
Author(s):  
Ben Timmermans ◽  
Andrew G. P. Shaw ◽  
Christine Gommenginger

Measurements of significant wave height from satellite altimeter missions are finding increasing application in investigations of wave climate, sea state variability and trends, in particular as the means to mitigate the general sparsity of in situ measurements. However, many questions remain over the suitability of altimeter data for the representation of extreme sea states and applications in the coastal zone. In this paper, the limitations of altimeter data to estimate coastal Hs extremes (<10 km from shore) are investigated using the European Space Agency Sea State Climate Change Initiative L2P altimeter data v1.1 product recently released. This Sea State CCI product provides near complete global coverage and a continuous record of 28 years. It is used here together with in situ data from moored wave buoys at six sites around the coast of the United States. The limitations of estimating extreme values based on satellite data are quantified and linked to several factors including the impact of data corruption nearshore, the influence of coastline morphology and local wave climate dynamics, and the spatio-temporal sampling achieved by altimeters. The factors combine to lead to considerable underestimation of estimated Hs 10-yr return levels. Sensitivity to these factors is evaluated at specific sites, leading to recommendations about the use of satellite data to estimate extremes and their temporal evolution in coastal environments.


Author(s):  
Felice Arena ◽  
Valentina Laface ◽  
Giovanni Malara ◽  
Alessandra Romolo

The design of an energy harvester involves achieving the two following objectives: to install a safe structure with a reasonable safety margin; and to install an effective device which is able to capture energy in a variety of environmental conditions. In this context, the long-term modelling of the environmental variables plays a crucial role. In the context of wave energy harvesters, the occurrence of sea storms is a critical element in the design process. Indeed, its identification is required for determining extreme loads as well as controlled de-activations of the device for preserving the mechanical components into the device. Considering these issues, the paper proposes an analysis of the wave climate oriented to the determination of the downtime and of the energy losses. Specifically, the paper provides expressions: for calculating the average deactivation time of a wave energy device, given that it must be deactivated if the significant wave height is larger than a certain threshold; and for calculating the energy “lost” (as it is not absorbed by the device) during a storm in which the maximum wave height is larger than the mentioned threshold. The paper shows that closed-form expressions can be obtained by relying on the Equivalent Triangular Storm (ETS) model and that the adequacy of the estimations improves for larger values of the significant wave height threshold.


2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Zikra ◽  
Noriaki Hashimoto ◽  
Kodama Mitsuyasu ◽  
Kriyo Sambodho

Over recent years, ocean wave climate change due to global warming has attracted a lot of attention not only coastal and offshore engineer but also stakeholders in the marine industry. There is a wide range of application in ocean environment that require information on ocean wave climate data, such as ships design, design of offshore platforms and coastal structures or naval industry. In this research, monthly variation in significant wave height is studied using MRI-AGCM3.2 wind climate data for 25 year period from 1979-2003. The 25 year significant wave height simulation derived from JMA/MRI-AGCM wind climate data. The JMA/MRI-AGCM climate data were input into WAM model. The results showed that the monthly variability of significant wave height in the Northern Hemisphere is greater than in the Southern Hemisphere. Meanwhile, most of the equatorial regions are in calm condition all year. 


RBRH ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natália Lemke ◽  
◽  
Lauro Julio Calliari ◽  
José Antônio Scotti Fontoura ◽  
Déborah Fonseca Aguiar

ABSTRACT The wave climate characterization in coastal environments is essentially important to oceanography and coastal engineering professionals regarding coastal protection works. Thus, this study aims to determine the most frequent wave parameters (significant wave height, peak period and peak direction) in Patos Lagoon during the period of operation of a directional waverider buoy (from 01/27/2015 to 06/30/2015). The equipment was moored at approximately 14 km from the São Lourenço do Sul coast at the geographic coordinates of 31º29’06” S and 51º55’07” W, with local depth of six meters, registering significant wave height, peak period and peak direction time series. During the analyzed period, the greatest wave frequencies corresponded to short periods (between 2 and 3.5 seconds) and small values of significant wave heights (up to 0.6 meters), with east peak wave directions. The largest wave occurrences corresponded to east peak wave directions (33.3%); peak wave periods between 2.5 and 3 seconds (25.6%) and between 3 and 3.5 seconds (22.1%); and to significant wave heights of up to 0.3 meters (41.2%) and from 0.3 to 0.6 meters (38%). This research yielded unprecedented findings to Patos Lagoon by describing in detail the most occurring wave parameters during the analyzed period, establishing a consistent basis for several other studies that might still be conducted by the scientific community.


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