Dr Grant Smith¹, Dr Vanessa Hernaman², Dr Ron Hoeke², Dr Diana Greenslade¹, Dr Kathleen McInnes², Dr Julian O’Grady², Dr Claire Spillman¹, Mx Claire Trenham², Dr Stefan Zieger¹

¹Bureau Of Meteorology, Melbourne, Australia, ²CSIRO, Melbourne, Australia

Coastal hazards from extreme water levels can lead to coastal erosion and inundation, impacting communities by creating accessibility issues and damage to structures, roadways, and amenities. Extreme water levels on open coastlines are a product of high tides, sea level variability, storm surge, and wave action. Through the Australian Climate Service (ACS) a new global wave hindcast will be produced, with a primary objective to create full wave energy spectra boundary conditions for a downscaled extreme water level coupled hydrodynamic-wave model (SCHISM-WWM3) for the Australian coastline.

The wave model will be based on WaveWatch III. This version includes model advancements such as updated physics, new capabilities for grid configurations, and computational efficiencies. A spherical multi-cell grid will be used to obtain finer resolutions near Australia from 12 km global to 6 km around Australia. Current data observations will be tested to see if extreme wave estimates can be improved, particularly in the Southern Ocean. Validation will be performed using independent observations to ensure the new wave fields produced are accurate with particular attention to the representation of extreme events.

The next generation wave hindcast will be publicly available with the potential for use in other marine projects and applications such as wave energy assessments, offshore infrastructure projects, defense, and downscaling for modelling wave hazards for Pacific Island nations.

Biography:

Dr Grant Smith is a senior research scientist working as the oceanographer for the Climate and Oceans Support Program in the Pacific (COSPPac). He is primarily involved with marine seasonal forecasting for sub-seasonal to seasonal time scales for both Australia and the Pacific.