Decadal variations in wave heights off Cape Kelba, Saaremaa Island, and their relationships with changes in wind climate

Abstract

The physical and optical properties of an atmospheric aerosol mixture depend on a number of factors. The relative humidity influences the size of hydroscopic particles and the effective radius of an aerosol mixture. In consequence, values of the aerosol extinction, the aerosol optical thickness and theÅngström coefficient are modified. A similar effect is observed when the aerosol composition changes. A higher content of small aerosol particles causes the effective radius of an aerosol mixture to decrease and theÅngström coefficient to increase. Both effects are analysed in this paper. The parameters of the size distribution and the type of components used to represent natural atmospheric aerosol mixtures are based on experimental data. The main components are sea-salts (SSA), anthropogenic salts (WS, e.g. NH 4 HSO 4 , NH 4 NO 3 , (NH 4 ) 2 SO 4

Decadal changes in wave climate and sea level regime: the main causes of the recent intensification of coastal geomorphic processes along the coasts of Western Estonia?

“…On the basis of annual series of the 90 and 99 percentiles, as well as annual maxima, the trend is clearly increasing (Fig. 5b) [13]. Thus, the trends in the average properties of wave fields and in extreme wave conditions are different along the western coast of Estonia.…”

“…The wind has been measured with "weathercocks" (wind vanes of Wild's design) in 1966-1976, automatic anemorhumbometers in 1976-2003, and MILOS-520 automatic weather complexes since September 2003. The older data in the database has been slightly corrected for homogeneity [13].…”

“…During this 5-month comparison period, the SMB model reproduced the wave parameters at the single point with acceptable accuracy. The model output required very moderate calibration to yield as high correlation coefficient as 0.88, low RMSE (0.233) and nearly equal average and maximum values of calculated and measured wave properties [13]. The calibrated model was further used in multiyear wave hindcast.…”

Wind and wave storms, storm surges and sea level rise along the Estonian coast of the Baltic Sea

“…Winds have been measured by "weathercocks" (wind vanes of Wild's design) during 1966-1976, automatic anemorhumbometers during 1976-2003, and MILOS-520 automatic weather complexes since September 2003. The older data in the database have been slightly corrected for homogeneity following the procedure described in [5,10].…”

“…This complex provided calibration data for the SMB model. The SMB-model, also called the significant wave method, is based on the fetch-limited equations of Sverdrup, Munk, and Bretschneider [5,13].…”