Understanding uncertainties in contemporary and future extreme wave events for broad-scale impact and adaptation planning.

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%

SUBMITTER: Morim J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9833663 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature