Waves exert stress on coastal structure, sediment transport, coastal erosion, and so on and are therefore an important contributor to coastal hazards. The coincidence of high waves and a high tide further augments coastal vulnerability. Waves are primarily driven by surface wind. Wave height increase associated with mean and extreme wind speed increase are well documented in literature (

The average population density is significantly higher along the nearshore coastal zones compared to inland areas. Therefore, proper assessment and evaluation of the impact of climate change on coastal belts has immense societal benefits. The head Bay region located in the north Indian Ocean is a thickly populated area and highly vulnerable to threats from sea-level rise and extreme weather events. In this study, the wave climatology for the north Indian Ocean specifically covering the head Bay region was examined, utilizing the past 21 years of satellite altimeter data for the period ranging from 1992 to 2012. In addition, the study also examines the significant wave heights obtained from the WAVEWATCH-III (WW3) model to substantiate and evaluate the findings of the observed variability from altimeter records. The study used daily altimeter data from eight satellite missions to understand the annual and seasonal variability in wind speed and significant wave heights for the head Bay region. The annual distribution of these parameters follow the climatology, whereas the percentage variability in both wind speed and significant wave height show a clear contrasting trend exhibiting a zonal dipole. The study establishes the fact that the responsible mechanism for this contrasting trend is the variations in mean sea level pressure over the head Bay region. In addition, a comprehensive analysis using empirical orthogonal function (EOF) shows that the second mode that represents the inter-seasonal variations substantiates the trend observed in the percentage distribution of these parameters. Interestingly, the study clearly signifies that trends in both wind speed and significant wave height was lower for the western side, unlike that noticed over the eastern portions in the head Bay of Bengal region.

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This dataset presents historical ocean wave climate during 1960–2020, simulated using the numerical model WAVEWATCH III (WW3) forced by Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) simulations corresponding to natural-only (NAT), greenhouse gas-only (GHG), aerosol-only (AER) forcings, combined forcing (natural and anthropogenic; ALL), and pre-industrial control conditions. Surface wind at 3-hourly temporal resolution, and sea-ice area fraction at monthly frequency, from a CMIP6 model - MRI-ESM2.0 are used to force WW3 over the global ocean. Model calibration and validation of the significant wave height are carried out using inter-calibrated multi-mission altimeter data produced by the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative, with additional corroboration using ERA-5 reanalysis. The simulated dataset is assessed for its skill to represent mean state, extremes, trends, seasonal cycle, time consistency, and spatial distribution over time. Numerically simulated wave parameters for different individual external forcing scenario is not available yet. This study produces a novel database particularly useful for detection and attribution analysis to quantify the relative contributions of natural and anthropogenic forcings to historical changes.

To reduce the dependency on fossil fuels and mitigate the related climate change disasters, renewable energies are experiencing rapid interest, financial investment, and technological development. Alongside of other leading renewable energies, ocean wave energy (hereafter simply referred to as wave energy unless otherwise stated) is also promising owing to its additional advantages such as high energy density compared to others, high predictability, low visibility and environmental impact, coastal protection, etc. (Kamranzad & Hadadpour, 2020). The design parameters of wave energy farms depend on wave energy resource variability. Being a key element of climate system (Hemer et al., 2012), waves are likely to be affected by global climate change. Previous studies have claimed that in addition to amount of energy and its seasonality, long-term change is also prerequisite for

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Satellite observations of significant wave height (Hs) have recently reached 30 years of continuous record. Is this length sufficient to detect the effect of anthropogenically forced climate change on wave height trends? Wave height decadal variability is influenced by a combination of internal variability and forced variability caused by both anthropogenic and natural forcing. Using a statistical model to derive Hs from sea level pressure field and exploiting ERA‐5 reanalysis data as well as 80 members of the Community Earth System Model v2 large ensemble, we show that, over the North Atlantic (NA), altimetry‐based Hs trends are mostly caused by internal variability. This suggests that Hs changes computed over the satellite era are not yet controlled by anthropogenic climate change. Starting from 1993, the date of emergence, defined as the date when the forced signal becomes dominant over the internal variability, is later than 2050 for Hs in the NA.