Comparison of Wind and Wave Extremes in Very Long-Term Climatic Scales

Abstract

The study of very long-term ocean climate is of great interest in a number of different applications. In a climate change perspective, estimations of return values of wind and wave parameters to a future climate are of great importance for risk management and adaptation purposes. However, there are various ways of estimating the required return values, which introduce additional uncertainties in extreme weather and climate variables pertaining to both current and future climates. The different approaches that are considered in the present work include the annual maxima approach, the block maxima approach, and the MENU method which is based on the calculation of return periods of various level values from nonstationary time series data. Furthermore, the effect of different modelling choices within each of the approaches will be explored. Thus, a range of different return value estimates for the different data sets is obtained for a field of datapoints. Long-term datasets for an area in the North Atlantic Ocean are used in the present study, derived for project ExWaCli, comprising of 30 years in the present (historic period) and two sets of 30 years in the future (future projections). The comparison between the results of the various approaches reveals a variability of the return period estimates, and an assessment of this is given. Moreover, it seems that a slight shift towards higher extremes in a future wave climate might be possible based on the particular datasets that have been analysed.