Global Wind Speed and Wave Height Extremes Derived from Long-Duration Satellite Records

Alicia Takbash; Ian R Young; Oyvind Breivik

Journal article

Global Wind Speed and Wave Height Extremes Derived from Long-Duration Satellite Records

Alicia Takbash, Ian R Young, Oyvind Breivik

JOURNAL OF CLIMATE | AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC | Published : 2019

DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0520.1

Abstract

The application of extreme-value analysis to long-duration (30 year) global altimeter and radiometer datasets is considered. In contrast to previous extreme-value analyses of satellite data, the dataset is sufficiently long to enable a peaks over threshold analysis to be undertaken. When applied to altimeter data for wind speed and significant wave height, this analysis produces values consistent with buoy validation data and previous numerical model reanalysis datasets. The spatial distributions produced are also consistent with the model reanalysis data. However, the altimeter data shows much greater finescale structure for wind speed, which is consistent with known tropical cyclone activi..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Ian Young Author Infrastructure Engineering

Related Projects (2)

GLOBAL TRENDS IN OCEANIC WIND SPEED AND WAVE HEIGHT

This project will determine whether winds and waves over the world's oceans have changed over the past 30 years. Such information is critica..

PREDICTING ENVIRONMENTAL EXTREMES IN A PERIOD OF CLIMATE CHANGE

This project has the potential to reduce the uncertainty in the predictions of extreme winds and waves used to design and operate coastal an..

Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Awarded by Research Council of Norway through the ExWaMar project

Funding Acknowledgements

IRY gratefully acknowledges the support of the Australian Research Council through Grants DP130100215 and DP160100738. This support has been invaluable in completing this extensive study. The raw datasets used in the study were supplied by Globwave (altimeter and buoy) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS; radiometer/scatterometer). Without these public domain archives, the study would have been extremely difficult. OB gratefully acknowledges support from the Research Council of Norway through the ExWaMar project (Grant Number 256466) and the European Research Area for Climate Services through the WINDSURFER project.