Regional Meteorological–Marine Reanalyses and Climate Change Projections

Abstract

Consistent meteorological/oceanographic datasets derived from regional reanalyses and 1 climate change projections prove particularly useful for coastal defense and offshore industry. C oastal and offshore applications require appropriate planning and design. For most of them, statistics of extreme wind, waves, and storm surges are of central importance. To obtain such statistics long and homogeneous time series are needed.Usually such time series are hardly available. In most cases observations are either missing, cover too short periods, or are lacking homogeneity, that is, long-term changes in the time series are not entirely related to geophysical changes on the scale of interest, but are partly due to changes in instrumentation, measurement technique, or other factors, such as changes in the surrounding of the measurement site.There are in principle two approaches to address these issues (cf. WASA 1998). One is the use of proxy data that are considered to be more homogeneous and are available for longer periods. An example of this is the use of pressure data to derive indices for changes in storm activity (e.g., Schmidt and von Storch 1993). The other approach is to • Regional meteorological-marine reanalyses have been used by the Flensburger Schiffbau Gesellschaft to optimize RoRo ferry operating in the North Sea. Such data have been used for instance during the design process of the ferry Jasmine. The photo shows the vessel at the shipyard shortly before launch.

Climate services for marine applications in Europe

“…Similar results for tide-surges and wind waves are inferred and described in Weisse and Pluess (2006) and Weisse and Günther (2007). Using both, in-situ wind speed measurements from a series of buoys and wind speeds derived from different satellite products Winterfeldt and Weisse (2009);Winterfeldt et al (2010); Winterfeldt et al (2011) assessed the added value of coastDat-1 compared to the driving global NCEP/NCAR reanalysis and found that wind speeds from coastDat-1 are improved, in particular in coastal areas and along coastlines with complex orography.…”

A Novel Hybrid Wind-Wave Energy Converter for Jacket-Frame Substructures

“…The figure shows frontal and top views of the device, where some of its components and parts are indicated. The proposed device is formed by a chamber (1); a substructure system (2) to link the device to the seabed (i.e., usually the substructure system will be shared with a wind turbine); a ballast tank (3), defined as part of the hull of the chamber between the inner (7) and external walls of the chamber; a skirt (4) or extension at the bottom of the chamber; one or more air turbines (5), which act as the OWC power take-off, driving the electric generator to produce electricity; a security and control system including pressure relief valves (6); and a set of bulkheads (8) that provide structural strength and divide the internal part of the chamber into separate segments (9). Note that the numbers shown in brackets refer to those in the figure.…”

“…In a global scenario of climate change and amid mounting threats to the marine environment [4][5][6][7], the sustainable development of offshore wind is not only crucial for the consolidation of the industry, but also to providing a reliable and accessible source of renewable energy. In this context, multipurpose platforms have been suggested as a sustainable means of exploitation of certain maritime resources, which are usually in the same area [8][9][10][11]-e.g., marine renewable energies (MREs), food resources (fisheries and aquaculture), maritime transport and leisure, among others.…”

Bridging the gap between observational oceanography and users

“…over many decades are reconstructed. The data set is used by more than 80 users with about 47 % of them located in industry, 15 % in government bodies, and 38 % in other research institutes (www.coastdat.de/; Weisse et al, 2008.…”