Spatial Significant Wave Height Variation Assessment and Its Estimation

Abstract

Significant wave height is a very important variable used in ocean engineering studies. Spatial variation of the significant wave height is very important for wave energy abstraction studies which is highly dependent on the wave climate. Significant wave height and period are two of the most important wave features that directly affect the energy production. In nature these two variables exhibit temporal randomness and spatial changes. These variations cause heterogeneous regional dispersion of wave energy. In order to assess regional energy distribution, it is necessary to use the concept of regionalized variables through geostatistical methods. The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the spatial characteristics of significant wave height by the point cumulative semivariogram approach leading to a standard regional dependence function (SRDF) based on concepts of the semivariogram. It is also possible to estimate the unmeasured station value from the closest stations by using SRDF and determine the optimum station intervals. The SRDFs are obtained from available spatial data decreasing with distance for a given set of sites. The wave energy resource in a region of the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of the United States has been evaluated as the application of proposed methodology. It is found that spatial modeling of the region considered can be achieved by using the SRDF function in acceptable error limits.