Using the SWAN Wave Model and Satellite Altimeter Data to Study the Influence of Climate Change at the Coast

This paper describes the development and application of a technique for using satellite altimeter measurements as boundary data to drive the nearshore spectral wave model, SWAN. The aim was to assess the impact in coastal areas of extreme events or changes in offshore climatology and to extend the usefulness of satellite altimetry further inshore.

For the purpose of verifying the technique, three test areas where both bathymetry and some in situ data were available were chosen. The technique could, potentially, be applied to any coastal location where there is bathymetric information although, as the results reported in this paper show, intelligence must be used in adapting the methodology for different sites. It is also necessary to have information on the local wind field from either models or measurements.

The experiments at the three test areas demonstrated that there is not a simple relationship between the offshore wave height climate and the inshore climate in a particular region. Important complicating factors are bathymetry, tidal range and incident wave angle. As was most clearly demonstrated in the Carmarthen Bay test area, bathymetric complexity leads to high spatial variation in the amount of wave energy dissipated close to the coast. In the study of extreme wave events described in this paper the exact value of the local wind field was not found to be critical.

This work was a first trial combining wave climatology derived from satellite altimetry with a third generation coastal wave model so was necessarily experimental. The general trends and patterns of spatial variation obtained are encouraging but there remains significant, unquantifiable uncertainty in the results. Better observations of nearshore waves, improved understanding of the joint probability distribution of water level and waves as well as more knowledge of future climate change would all improve accuracy.