ESTELA: a method for evaluating the source and travel time of the wave energy reaching a local area

The description of wave climate at a local scale is of paramount importance for offshore and coastal engineering applications. Conditions influencing wave characteristics at a specific location cannot, however, be fully understood by studying only local information. It is necessary to take into account the dynamics of the ocean surface over a large 'upstream' wave generation area. The goal of this work is to provide a methodology to easily characterize the area of influence of any particular ocean location worldwide. Moreover, the developed method is able to characterize the wave energy and travel time in that area. The method is based on a global scale analysis using both geographically and physically based criteria. The geographic criteria rely on the assumption that deep water waves travel along great circle paths. This limits the area of influence by neglecting energy that cannot reach a target point, as its path is blocked by land. The individual spectral partitions from a global wave reanalysis are used to reconstruct the spectral information and apply the physically based criteria. The criteria are based on the selection of the fraction of energy that travels towards the target point for each analysed grid point. The method has been tested on several locations worldwide. Results provide maps that inform about the relative importance of different oceanic areas to the local wave climate at any target point. This information cannot be inferred from local parameters and agrees with information from other approaches. The methodology may be useful in a number of applications, such as statistical downscaling, storm tracking and grid definition in numerical modelling.