Observation of wind-waves from a moored buoy in the Southern Ocean
The Southern Ocean is an important component in the global wave climate. However, owing to a lack of observations, our understanding of waves is poor compared to other regions. The Southern Ocean Flux Station (SOFS) has been deployed to fill this gap and represents the first successful moored air-se...
| Published in: | Ocean Dynamics |
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | unknown |
| Published: |
Springer
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/407623 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-015-0873-3 |
| Summary: | The Southern Ocean is an important component in the global wave climate. However, owing to a lack of observations, our understanding of waves is poor compared to other regions. The Southern Ocean Flux Station (SOFS) has been deployed to fill this gap and represents the first successful moored air-sea flux station at these southern hemisphere latitudes. In this paper, we present for the first time the results from the analysis of the wave measurements, focused on statistics and extremes of the main wave parameters. Furthermore, a spectral characterization is performed regarding the number of wave systems and predominance of swell/wind-sea. Our results indicate a high consistency in terms of wave parameters for all deployments. The maximum significant wave height obtained in the 705 days of observation was 13.41 m. The main spectra found represent unimodal swell dominated cases; however, the dimensionless energy plotted against dimensionless peak frequency for these spectra follows a well-known relation for wind-sea conditions. In addition, the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research wave hindcast is validated with the SOFS data. |
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