On the ability of statistical wind-wave models to capture the variability and long-term trends of the North Atlantic winter wave climate

• Published in: Ocean Modelling
• Main Authors: Martínez-Asensio, Adrián, Marcos, Marta, Tsimplis, M. N., Jordá, Gabriel, Gomis, Damià
• Other Authors: Agencia Estatal de Meteorología (España), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (España), Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Elsevier 2016
• Subjects: Climate change; North Atlantic; Dynamical downscaling; Statistical downscaling; Wave climate; Marcos; Martínez
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/152564; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocemod.2016.02.006; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003339; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003329; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004837

A dynamical wind-wave climate simulation covering the North Atlantic Ocean and spanning the whole 21st century under the A1B scenario has been compared with a set of statistical projections using atmospheric variables or large scale climate indices as predictors. As a first step, the performance of all statistical models has been evaluated for the present-day climate; namely they have been compared with a dynamical wind-wave hindcast in terms of winter Significant Wave Height (SWH) trends and variance as well as with altimetry data. For the projections, it has been found that statistical models that use wind speed as independent variable predictor are able to capture a larger fraction of the winter SWH inter-annual variability (68% on average) and of the long term changes projected by the dynamical simulation. Conversely, regression models using climate indices, sea level pressure and/or pressure gradient as predictors, account for a smaller SWH variance (from 2.8% to 33%) and do not reproduce the dynamically projected long term trends over the North Atlantic. Investigating the wind-sea and swell components separately, we have found that the combination of two regression models, one for wind-sea waves and another one for the swell component, can improve significantly the wave field projections obtained from single regression models over the North Atlantic. This work initiated in the framework of the projects VANIMEDAT-2 (CTM2009-10163-C02-01, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the E-Plan of the Spanish Government) and ESCENARIOS (contract funded by the Agencia Estatal de METeorología); in its latter stage its has been partly supported by the project CLIMPACT (CGL2014-54246-C2-1-R, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy). A. Martínez-Asensio acknowledges an FPI grant associated with the VANIMEDAT-2 project. M. Marcos and G. Jordà acknowledge a “Ramón y Cajal” contract funded by the Spanish Government. M.N. Tsimplis and X. Feng acknowledge Lloyd's Register Foundation, which supports ...