An Approach towards a 40-Year High-Resolution Wave Hindcast for the Southern North Sea

• Main Authors: Ralf Weisse, Gerhard Gayer, The Southern, North Sea
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2000
• Subjects: Wasa; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.16.3214; http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/weisse/Download/2000/rwe_procmont.pdf

INTRODUCTION In the marine environment the planing of the sustainable development of economic activities requires long term information about the prevailing environmental conditions. Detailed knowledge on local wave conditions is an essential prerequisite for designing marine and coastal protection structures. To estimate the risk which emerges from local wave conditions knowledge on both, the wave climatology and the extreme events is necessary. Thus a couple of attempts have been undertaken within the last few years to provide reasonable reconstructions of the past wave conditions. One of the more prominent attempts to reconstruct the wave and storm climate over a longer period was provided by the WASA Group (WASA 1998). Their goal was to prove or disprove hypotheses of a worsening storm and wave climate in the Northeast North Atlantic. The changes in the wave climate were assessed using a state-of-the-art wave model driven by wind analyses over a period of 40 years (1955-1994) (Gu