Аннотация:Wind waves are of a crucial importance both to the coastal waters and to the coast itself. They influence nearly all processes occurring in the coastal zone – e.g. marine currents, mixing of freshwater form rivers with marine waters and others. Moreover, wind waves are one of the most hazardous phenomena on the sea and they must be considered during the construction and exploitation of engineering facilities both on the coasts and offshore, shipping and other kinds of human activities. Wind waves are also one of the possible sources of renewable energy.
This study is focused on the alterations and typical features of the wind wave climate of the Black Sea’s coastal waters since 1979 till nowadays. Wind wave parameters were calculated by means of the 3rd-generation numerical spectral wind wave model SWAN, which is widely used on various spatial scales – both coastal waters and open seas. Data on wind speed and direction from the NCEP CFSR reanalysis were used as forcing. The computations were performed on an unstructured computational grid with cell size depending on the distance from the shoreline.
Modeling results were applied to evaluate the main characteristics of the wind wave in various coastal areas of the sea: seasonal and total maximal wave heights, recurrences of wave heights and directions, duration of storms etc. Special attention is paid to the multiannual trends of these parameters.
The reported study was funded by RFBR within the research project No. 16-35-00488.