Swell wave events in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico : Atmospheric forcing and case study analysis
The Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea are two very important marginal seas of the North Atlantic Ocean that wash the shores of thirty-eight (38) countries that show high vulnerability to coastal hazards. For a given year, the wave climate of the area is affected by several atmospheric forcing that ar...
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| Format: | Other/Unknown Material |
| Language: | unknown |
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Delft : UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education
2018
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.25831/dm9f-2z12 http://cdm21063.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/masters2/id/18873 |
| Summary: | The Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea are two very important marginal seas of the North Atlantic Ocean that wash the shores of thirty-eight (38) countries that show high vulnerability to coastal hazards. For a given year, the wave climate of the area is affected by several atmospheric forcing that are both spatially and seasonally varying over the area. The research presented successfully extracted and clustered five (5) wind forcing events that affect the swell and wind sea climate of the study area. The events were classified as either local swell for wind fields that are generated in the GOM and CS or as remote swell generating wind fields for those events outside of the study. The local wind fields were the Caribbean Low-Level Jet (CLLJ) and the Central American Cold Surge (CACS), whereas the remote wind fields were the North East Trade Winds (NETW) and the Extratropical Transition (ET) of Tropical Cyclones. The spatial variability of the Tropical Cyclones (TC) allows them to produce both local and remote swells. The usual approach for filtering wind events focuses on the vertical wind profile, however, the approach presented herein shows that a surface level assessment using the newly developed high-resolution reanalysis dataset of ERA-5 was also effective at the filtering these highly dynamic wind events. For the 15years analysis (2001 - 2016), it was found that swell and wind sea climate of the study area is affected 63% of the time by a dominance in the CLLJ, 24% of the times the NETW are dominant and 2% (13-14 events) of the times the CACS active. The wave fields produced by each of these named wind fields were assessed to find out the amount of the energy that they provide to the GOM and CS. Through a case study assessment of hurricanes, it was found that TCs had highest amount of the energy in the CS and GOM causing a more than 300% increasing in the swell wave energy in the CS. However, the tracks of the hurricanes significant affect the energy content that affects the area as it noted that the island ... |
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