Identification of Parent Distribution of Typhoon-Generated Maximum Wave Heights in the East China Sea and Resulting Improvement of Reliability of Return Wave Height

Abstract

A sample of typhoon-generated annual maximum wave height (TG-AMWH) of 10, 000 years is produced for the East China Sea using a Monte-Carlo simulation model. Then, an extreme value analysis of this very large sample of TG-AMWH yields an estimate of the parent distribution of the TG-AMWH which is expressed as a Weibull distribution for nearly the entire sea. Next, a similar extreme value analysis is separately conducted for each of 200 sample sets, each with a size of 50. The investigation, based on a sample of return wave height with a size of 200 leads to the conclusion that the identification of the parent distribution of the TG-AMWH may significantly decrease the confidence interval of the return wave height. Also, this may be true of the historical typhoon case.