2023 Volume 79 Issue 18 Article ID: 23-18073
The scope of offshore construction work, such as floating offshore wind power and submarine resource development, is expanding into deep water areas. Waves and wind are important design and construction conditions, but the influence of ocean currents cannot be ignored from the perspective of construction safety for work vessels and navigational safety to the construction area in deep water. However, offshore current observation data is scarce, and JCOPE reanalysis data is effective for this purpose. In this paper, we examine the characteristics of ocean currents in the large water depth region of more than 100 m where offshore construction will be deployed in the future using JCOPE2M.
As a result, it was confirmed that JCOPE2M, which is a daily mean current, can sufficiently grasp the characteristics of offshore currents due to its high correlation with JCOPE-T. The maximum currents were about 0.5 to 1.0 m/s on the Pacific Ocean side north of Fukushima-oki and the Sea of Japan side, and more than 2 m/s on the Pacific Ocean side south of Fukushima-oki. Vertical profiles in the middle and lower troposphere were found to be overestimated by the 1/7 power law recommended by the guideline.
