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Updated: Aug 14, 2025

Measurements of Waves in a Wind-wave Tank Under Steady and Time-varying Wind Forcing
Published on: February 13, 2018
Understanding uncertainties in contemporary and future extreme wave events for broad-scale impact and adaptation
Joao Morim1, Thomas Wahl1, Sean Vitousek2
1Univeristy of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, FL, USA.
Abstract:
Understanding uncertainties in extreme wind-wave events is essential for offshore/coastal risk and adaptation estimates. Despite this, uncertainties in contemporary extreme wave events have not been assessed, and projections are still limited. Here, we quantify, at global scale, the uncertainties in contemporary extreme wave estimates across an ensemble of widely used global wave reanalyses/hindcasts supported by observations. We find that contemporary uncertainties in 50-year return period wave heights ([Formula: see text]) reach (on average) ~2.5 m in regions adjacent to coastlines and are primarily driven by atmospheric forcing. Furthermore, we show that uncertainties in contemporary [Formula: see text] estimates dominate projected 21st-century changes in [Formula: see text] across ~80% of global ocean and coastlines. When translated into broad-scale coastal risk analysis, these uncertainties are comparable to those from storm surges and projected sea level rise. Thus, uncertainties in contemporary extreme wave events need to be combined with those of projections to fully assess potential impacts.
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