Global estimates of extreme wind speed and wave height

Abstract

A long-term dataset of satellite altimeter measurements of significant wave height and wind speed, spanning 23 years, is analyzed to determine extreme values corresponding to a 100-yr return period. The analysis considers the suitability of both the initial distribution method (IDM) and peaks-over-threshold (POT) approaches and concludes that for wave height both IDM and POT methods can yield reliable results. For the first time, the global POT results for wave height show spatial consistency, a feature afforded by the larger dataset. The analyses also show that the POT approach is sensitive to spatial resolution. Since wind speed has greater spatial and temporal variability than wave height..