As part of the HIGHWAVE project we are delighted to announce that some recent work has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (Special issue on Extreme Waves). The work focuses on comparing the effects of the wave spectrum, computed using the Discrete Interaction Approximation (DIA) and the Webb–Resio–Tracy (WRT) methods, on statistical wave properties such as skewness and kurtosis. In addition, we investigate the minimum spatial domain size required to obtain meaningful statistical wave properties.

Ensembles of numerical simulations with three different computed wave spectra were performed and the values of kurtosis and skewness were obtained and compared for the three spectra. The results suggest that selecting a more computationally expensive WRT method does not affect the statistical values to a great extent. The most noticeable effect is due to the energy dissipation filter that is applied. It is concluded that selecting the WRT or the DIA algorithm for computing the wave spectrum needed for the numerical simulations does not lead to major differences in the statistical wave properties. However, more accurate energy dissipation mechanisms due to wave breaking are needed.

The question of the sensible spatial domain was addressed as well. The numerical simulations are performed over a physical domain of size 4.13 km by 4.13 km. The results indicate that statistical properties must be computed over an area of at least 4 km². The example we chose to illustrate the influence of the wave spectrum on statistical wave properties is that of a hindcast of the sea state that occurred when the extreme Draupner wave was recorded. In the event we considered, the mean wavelength was approximately 200 meters. Extrapolating, we could say that the spatial domain should be at least 10 times the wavelength to obtain meaningful statistical values.

Please visit the following link to access the full paper: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202011.0421/v1