Wave height characteristics in the Mediterranean Sea by means of numerical modeling, satellite data, statistical and geometrical techniques

Abstract

In this paper the main wave height characteristics in the Mediterranean Sea are studied from both observational and numerical perspectives. The numerical wave model WAM is employed on a high spatial resolution mode and in two different versions, one of which incorporates information for sea surface currents. Altimeter data obtained from all available satellite missions over the area are also utilized. The data sets are analyzed both by conventional statistical measures as well as by advanced techniques provided by a relatively new branch of mathematics, information geometry, in the framework of which the data under study and the distributions that they form are treated as elements of non Euclidean spaces. In this framework, novel ideas for the estimation of the deviations between the observed and modeled values are proposed.

Coupling hydrodynamic and wave models: first step and sensitivity experiments in the Mediterranean Sea

“…Model results were compared to satellite altimeter significant wave height and are summarized in Table 4 (last column) showing that this simple current-wave interaction coupling slightly improves the RMSE but worsens the Bias. This result is in agreement with previous studies by Galanis et al (2012) probably due to the still coarse resolution of the models and the winds used in both studies. In a semienclosed basin like the Mediterranean Sea, where the windsea strongly determines the shape of the wave spectrum, better improvements in the wave field predictions could be achieved by using higher resolution winds.…”

Seasonal Variability of Wind Sea and Swell Waves Climate along the Canary Current: The Local Wind Effect

“…Nevertheless, some areas experience a strong seasonality of the wave-field characteristics, mainly in marginal or enclosed seas [20,26,44,45]. This is also the case EBC systems [7].…”

“…These areas are among the most productive fisheries of the global ocean, due to the cold nutrient-enriched upwelled bottom waters that give rise to very rich biological activity at the surface. Although, the interaction between these winds features and upwelling has been relatively well studied [45][46][47][48][49][50] that is not the case with the regional wave climate. Concerns about waves and sea-state forecast on the western coasts of Morocco go back to early twentieth century, when an early warning system to the incoming of winter swells that could seriously limit harbor operations in Casablanca was developed by the French Navy, in collaboration with the Portuguese Weather Office in the Azores [51].…”

Satellite altimetry reveals spatial patterns of variations in the Baltic Sea wave climate

“…It is thus not surprising that it has been only scarcely used to validate model results in the Baltic Sea (Cieślikiewicz et al, 2008;Tuomi et al, 2011). With certain precautions in place, it has shown good results for basins such as the Mediterranean Sea (Cavaleri and Sclavo, 2006;Galanis et al, 2012), a nearshore region of the Indian Ocean (Hareef Baba Shaeb et al, 2015;Patra and Bhaskaran, 2016), and for a range of regional seas such as the China Sea (Kong et al, 2016), the Arabian Sea (Hithin et al, 2015), the Chukchi Sea (Francis et al, 2011), or the German Bight (Passaro et al, 2015).…”