A Long-Term Wave Hindcast System in Quasi-Closed Sea Areas

Seto Inland Sea

Abstract

This paper presents a wave hindcast system for estimating climatic characteristics of waves over 23 years at an arbitrary point in a quasi-closed basin that is partly connected to an open ocean such as the Seto Inland Sea. A data set of hourly over-sea wind distribution is made using measured wind data acquired at many coastal and sea stations. A wave computation at each of the wave measurement stations is conducted using a backward ray tracing wave model on a grid with high spatial resolution. Comparison between calculated and measured wave data shows that the system yields a reasonable estimate of long-term wave characteristics and that the present system has a higher ability in a long-term wave estimation than previous systems.