Future changes in ocean wind wave climate have broad implications for the physical infrastructure and environment in coastal, near- and offshore regions. A comprehensive assessment of the impact of climate change and the associated risks in these regions thus requires the consideration of changes in wave climate. However, the understanding of projected changes in wave climate is limited relative to many other climate variables such as temperature and precipitation. This results from the fact that coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (GCMs) typically lack wind wave parameterizations so that wave parameters are not available as a standard model output.

 

The HDwave project aims to decrease this knowledge gap by developing advanced statistical tools for the analysis of newly developed data sets of wave climate projections. More precisely, the objectives of the project are

• to develop advanced statistical models in space and time to describe past and future wave climate based on model outputs and data;
• to develop appropriate methods for uncertainty quantification that yield joint confidence assessments in space and time;
• to develop a probabilistic impact assessment framework for maritime infrastructure;
• to develop effective visualization tools for high-dimensional projections that can incorporate uncertainty information.

 

HDwave is a collaboration between researchers at the NR, DNV GL and SINTEF. NR manages the project and will collaborate with its research partners on developing space and space-time projections, uncertainty assessments and visualization tools. The project runs for four years, from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2019, and it is funded by the Research Council of Norway under the KLIMAFORSK program.