Statistics of wave groups measured in the northern North Sea: Comparisons between time series and spectral predictions

Paul Stansell, Julian Wolfram, Brian Linfoot

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    31 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This paper presents an analysis of wave time-series data collected from storms in the northern North Sea. Statistics of run and group lenghts obtained for each of 852 20-min records are compared with predictions of a Markov chain model. The Markov chain transition probabilities have been estimated in five ways. The first method, estimating directly from the data, makes minimal assumptions and shows that the Markov chain model can accurately predict mean run and group lengths. The four remaining methods assume the bivariate Rayleigh distribution for consecutive waveheights and estimate a correlation parameter to calculate the transition probabilities. Two time-series based approaches give relatively good estimates of the transition probabilities whilst a simple spectral approach under-estimates them somewhat. A second, more complex, spectral approach gives good estimates of the transition probabilities when the data are band-pass filtered but poor estimates when they are not. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)91-106
    Number of pages16
    JournalApplied Ocean Research
    Volume24
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Apr 2002

    Keywords

    • Group length
    • Markov chain model
    • Run length
    • Wave groups

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