A SIXTY YEAR EXTREME WAVE ANAYLSIS FOR THE SOUTHERN PERSIAN GULF, HORMUZ STRAIT AND OMAN SEA

Extreme wave analysis is a crucial step in port and offshore structure design and plays a large role in budgeting for these costly projects. Criteria obtained from these analyses also haveimportant safety implications for those involved. This study details such an analysis performed for waves in the southern Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and the Oman Sea regions. Extreme significant wave heights and associated extreme wave peak periods for various return periodsover a domain spanning from 52.625°E to 59.25°E and 23.25°N to 27.75° at a resolution of 0.125° x 0.125° were obtained by considering local storms occurring during the period 1958 – 2009 inclusive, representing fifty-two years worth of data. ECMWF wind fields were calibratedagainst altimetric and QuikSCAT observations of wind speed during significant storm events for the period 1992 to 2008. ERA40 wind fields were then calibrated with respect to the ECMWFwind fields. After calibration of the wave model WaveWatch III with respect to altimetricobservations of wave height [1], simulations were run for approximately 300 storms selected from a long-term climatic wave database. The wave outputs were used to perform an extremeanalysis using the Pareto distribution and extreme significant wave heights were estimated for return periods of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 years.

Keywords:

wind , swell , ECMWF , ERA40 , Pareto , calibration , altimetry , QuikSCAT