Wave Height Distributions and Rogue Waves in the Eastern Mediterranean

There is a lack of scientific knowledge about the physical sea characteristics of the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. The current work offers a comprehensive view of wave fields in southern Israel waters covering a period between January 2017 and June 2018. The analyzed data were collected by...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of marine science and engineering Vol. 9; no. 6; p. 660
Main Authors Knobler, Sagi, Bar, Daniel, Cohen, Rotem, Liberzon, Dan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.06.2021
Subjects
Analysis
Buoys
Coasts
Data analysis
Data search
Distribution
Empirical analysis
Environmental protection
extreme waves
Mathematical models
Ocean engineering
rogue waves
Sea-water
Seawater
Significant wave height
Storms
Tsunamis
Water waves
Wave data
Wave height
waves height distribution
Weather
Wind
Mediterranean Sea
Israel
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Summary:There is a lack of scientific knowledge about the physical sea characteristics of the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. The current work offers a comprehensive view of wave fields in southern Israel waters covering a period between January 2017 and June 2018. The analyzed data were collected by a meteorological buoy providing wind and wave parameters. As expected for this area, the strongest storm events occurred throughout October–April. In this paper, we analyze the buoy data following two main objectives—identifying the most appropriate statistical distribution model and examining wave data in search of rogue wave presence. The objectives were accomplished by comparing a number of models suitable for deep seawater waves. The Tayfun-Fedele third-order model showed the best agreement with the tail of the empirical wave height distribution. The examination of different statistical thresholds for the identification of rogue waves resulted in the detection of 109 unique waves, all of relatively low height. The characteristics of the detected rogue waves were examined, revealing that the majority of them presented crest-to-trough symmetry. This finding calls for a reevaluation of the crest amplitude being equal to or above 1.25, the significant wave height threshold which assumes rogue waves carry most of their energy in the crest.
ISSN:2077-1312
2077-1312
DOI:10.3390/jmse9060660