A New Solution for the Return Period of a Sea Storm in Which the Largest Wave Height Exceeds a Fixed Threshold

Author(s):  
Felice Arena ◽  
Diego Pavone

A new analytical solution for the return period of a sea storm in which the largest wave height exceeds a fixed threshold is obtained, by applying the Boccotti’s Equivalent Triangular Storm (ETS) model. An expression is then given for the probability that a wave, which is both higher than a fixed threshold and the highest of its own storm, will occur during a sea storm with a given intensity (the storm intensity being the maximum significant wave height during the storm). In the applications it is shown that the new solution has a simpler form than the Boccotti’s original one (two integrals to solve numerically, compared with the four integrals of the Boccotti’s solution), and that they give identical results. Finally it is achieved that the extreme waves of given height H, with large probability will occur in a sea storm with maximum significant wave height Hs max close to 0.5H.

Author(s):  
Philip Jonathan ◽  
Kevin Ewans

Statistics of storm peaks over threshold depend typically on a number of covariates including location, season and storm direction. Here, a non-homogeneous Poisson model is adopted to characterise storm peak events with respect to season for two Gulf of Mexico locations. The behaviour of storm peak significant wave height over threshold is characterised using a generalised Pareto model, the parameters of which vary smoothly with season using a Fourier form. The rate of occurrence of storm peaks is also modelled using a Poisson model with rate varying with season. A seasonally-varying extreme value threshold is estimated independently. The degree of smoothness of extreme value shape and scale, and the Poisson rate, with season, is regulated by roughness-penalised maximum likelihood; the optimal value of roughness selected by cross-validation. Despite the fact that only the peak significant wave height event for each storm is used for modelling, the influence of the whole period of a storm on design extremes for any seasonal interval is modelled using the concept of storm dissipation, providing a consistent means to estimate design criteria for arbitrary seasonal intervals. Characteristics of the 100-year storm peak significant wave height, estimated using the seasonal model, are examined and compared to those estimated ignoring seasonality.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Ramirez ◽  
Melisa Menendez ◽  
Guillaume Dodet

<p>The knowledge of ocean extreme wave climate is of significant importance for a number of coastal and marine activities (e.g. coastal protection, marine spatial planning, offshore engineering). This study uses the recently released Sea State CCI v1 altimeter product to analyze extreme wave climate conditions at global scale. The dataset comprises 28-years inter-calibrated and denoised significant wave height data from 10 altimeter missions.</p><p>First, a regional analysis of the available satellite information of extreme waves associated with both, tropical and extratropical cyclones, is carried out. As tropical cyclones, we analyze two intense events which affected the Florida Peninsula and Caribbean Islands: Wilma (in October 2005) and Irma (in August 2017) hurricanes. As extratropical cyclones, we focused on the extreme waves during the 2013-2014 winter season along the Atlantic European coasts. The extreme waves associated with these events are identified in the satellite dataset and are compared with in situ and high-resolution simulated data. The analysis of the satellite data during the storm tracks and its comparison against other data sources indicate that satellite data can provide added value for the analysis of extreme wave conditions that caused important coastal damages.</p><p>After assessing the quality of extreme wave data measured by altimeters from this regional analysis, we explore a method to characterize wave height return values (e.g. 50yr return period significant wave height) from the multi-mission satellite data. The method is validated through comparisons with return values estimated from long-term wave buoy records. The extreme analysis is based on monthly maxima of satellite significant wave height computed over marine areas of varying extensions and centered on a target location (e.g. the wave buoy location for comparison and validation of the method).  The extension of the areas is defined from a seasonal study of the spatial correlation and the error metrics of the satellite data against the selected coastal location. We found a threshold of 0.85 correlation as the isoline to select the satellite data subsample (i.er. larger areas to select satellite maxima are found during winter seasons). Finally, a non-stationary extreme model based on GEV distribution is applied to obtain quantiles of low probability. Outcomes from satellite data are validated against extreme estimates from buoy records.</p>


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 2913-2924 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Nikolkina ◽  
I. Didenkulova

Abstract. The evidence of rogue wave existence all over the world during last five years (2006–2010) has been collected based mainly on mass media sources. Only events associated with damage and human loss are included. The waves occurred not only in deep and shallow zones of the World Ocean, but also at the coast, where they were manifested as either sudden flooding of the coast or high splashes over steep banks or sea walls. From the total number of 131 reported events, 78 were identified as evidence of rogue waves (which are expected to be at least twice larger than the significant wave height). The background significant wave height was estimated from the satellite wave data. The rogue waves at the coast, where the significant wave height is unknown or meaningless, were selected based on their unexpectedness and hazardous character. The statistics built on the selected 78 events suggests that extreme waves cause more damage in shallow waters and at the coast than in the deep sea and can be used for hazard assessment of the rogue wave phenomenon.


2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 1647-1665 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Vinoth ◽  
I. R. Young

Abstract A long-term dataset of satellite altimeter measurements of significant wave height and wind speed, spanning 23 years, is analyzed to determine extreme values corresponding to a 100-yr return period. The analysis considers the suitability of both the initial distribution method (IDM) and peaks-over-threshold (POT) approaches and concludes that for wave height both IDM and POT methods can yield reliable results. For the first time, the global POT results for wave height show spatial consistency, a feature afforded by the larger dataset. The analyses also show that the POT approach is sensitive to spatial resolution. Since wind speed has greater spatial and temporal variability than wave height, the POT approach yields unreliable results for wind speed as a result of undersampling of peak events. The IDM approach does, however, generate extreme wind speed values in reasonable agreement with buoy estimates. The results show that the altimeter database can estimate 100-yr return period significant wave height to within 5% of buoy measurements and the 100-yr wind speed to within 10% of buoy measurements when using the IDM approach. Owing to the long dataset and global coverage, global estimates of extreme values can be developed on a 1° × 1° grid when using the IDM and a coarser 2° × 2° for the POT approach. The high-resolution 1° × 1° grid together with the long duration of the dataset means that finescale features not previously identified using altimeter data are clearly apparent in the IDM results. Goodness-of-fit tests show that the observed data conform to a Fisher–Tippett Type 1 (FT-1) distribution. Even in regions such as the Gulf of Mexico where extreme forcing is produced by small-scale hurricanes, the altimeter results are consistent with buoy data.


Author(s):  
Quentin Derbanne ◽  
Fabien Bigot ◽  
Guillaume de Hauteclocque

The evaluation of extreme bending moment corresponding to a 25 years return period requires very long simulations on a large number of sea states. This long term analysis is easy to do with a linear model of the ship response, but is impractical when using a time consuming model including non linear and slamming loads. In that case some simplified methods need to be applied. These methods are often based on Equivalent Design Waves (EDW) which are calibrated on the extreme linear value. The general practice is to define the EDW as a regular wave. A very simple method is to compute the non linear bending moment applying the pressure correction on the hull without recomputing the ship motions. A better method is to recompute in time domain the non linear ship response on this Design Wave. It is even possible to define a more realistic Design Wave, taking into account the frequency and directional content of the sea states used in the long term analysis: those waves are called Response Conditioned Wave and Directional Response Conditioned Waves. The different methods are applied to an Ultra Large Container Ship (ULCS). Hydro-structure calculations are carried out on a severe design sea state, taking into account Froude-Krylov pressure correction, slamming forces and whipping response. Results of a very long computation are compared to the results of the Design Wave approaches. Another method is proposed to compute very rare events. It is based on an artificial increase of the significant wave height of the sea state, and the assumption of the independence of the non linear effects to the significant wave height. Using this method it is possible, with a simulation of only a few hours, to predict a very rare short term event, corresponding to a very long return period. The results are compared to the Design Wave results and appear to be much more precise.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1426
Author(s):  
Valentina Laface ◽  
Felice Arena

The paper is focused on the formulation of an adequate criterion for associating wave storm events to the generating wind storm ones, and on the study of correlation between their characteristic parameters. In this context, the sea storm definition commonly used for storm identification from significant wave height data is adapted for wind storm, by processing wind speed data. A sensitivity analysis is proposed as function of the storm thresholds aiming at identifying optimal combination of wind speed and significant wave height thresholds allowing the association of relatively large number of events ensuring high correlation between wind and wave storm parameters. The analysis is carried out using as input data wind speeds and significant wave heights from four meteorological (buoys and anemometers) stations of the National Data Buoy Center moored off the East Coast of the United States. Results reveal that an optimal threshold combination is achieved assuming both wind speed and significant wave height threshold as 1.5 time their respective averages.


Author(s):  
Felice Arena ◽  
Valentina Laface

This work proposes an analysis of storms in Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, which is carried out by applying the Boccotti’s Equivalent Triangular Storm (ETS) model. The ETS model represents any actual storm by means of two parameters. The former gives the storm intensity, which is equal to the maximum significant wave height during the actual storm; the latter represents the storm duration and it is such that the maximum expected wave height is the same in the actual storm and in the equivalent triangular storm. Data from buoys of the NOAA-NDBC (National Data Buoy Center, USA) are used in the applications, by considering different sampling Δt between two consecutive records, which varies between 1 and 6 hours. The sensitivity of the ETS model with the variation of Δt is investigated for the long-term modeling of severe storms. The results show that the structure of storms is strongly modified as Δt increases: both the intensity and the duration may change significantly. The effects of this results for long term statistics are investigated by means of the return period R(Hs > h) of a storm in which the maximum significant wave height exceeds the threshold h, which is evaluated by using data with different sampling Δt between two consecutive records. Finally for different values of the return period R, the return value of significant wave height and the mean persistence Dm(h), giving the mean time during which the significant wave height is greater than fixed threshold (in the storms where the threshold is exceeded), are calculated.


Author(s):  
Felice Arena ◽  
Saveria Meduri ◽  
Diego Pavone ◽  
Alessandra Romolo

The paper proposes the directional analysis of the severest storms recorded by the Italian Wave Measurement Network (RON). For this purpose the buoy data have been processed and all the storms have been selected; for the strongest storms, the direction of the sea states, which form them, has been analyzed. The directional return period of sea storms in which the maximum significant wave height exceeds a threshold is then obtained, by applying the ETS model. It is found that, for the prediction of extreme storms off Italy, it is possible to assume the duration of storms constant, with an error smaller than 4%.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (10) ◽  
pp. 2603-2609 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. A. Hsu ◽  
Yijun He ◽  
Hui Shen

AbstractStudies suggested that neutral-stability wind speed at 10 m U10 ≥ 9 m s −1 and wave steepness Hs/Lp ≥ 0.020 can be taken as criteria for aerodynamically rough ocean surface and the onset of a wind sea, respectively; here, Hs is the significant wave height, and Lp is the peak wavelength. Based on these criteria, it is found that, for the growing wind seas when the wave steepness increases with time during Hurricane Matthew in 2016 before the arrival of its center, the dimensionless significant wave height and peak period is approximately linearly related, resulting in U10 = 35Hs/Tp; here, Tp is the dominant or peak wave period. This proposed wind–wave relation for aerodynamically rough flow over the wind seas is further verified under Hurricane Ivan and North Sea storm conditions. However, after the passage of Matthew’s center, when the wave steepness was nearly steady, a power-law relation between the dimensionless wave height and its period prevailed with its exponent equal to 1.86 and a very high correlation coefficient of 0.97.


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