Sea Storm Analysis: Evaluation of Multiannual Wave Parameters Retrieved from HF Radar and Wave Model

Abstract

Intense atmospheric disturbances, which impact directly on the sea surface causing a significant increase in wave height and sometimes strong storm surges, have become increasingly frequent in recent years in the Mediterranean Sea, producing extreme concern in highly populated coastal areas, such as the Gulf of Naples (Western Mediterranean Sea, Central Tyrrhenian Sea). In this work, fifty-six months of wave parameters retrieved by an HF radar network are integrated with numerical outputs to analyze the seasonality of extreme events in the study area and to investigate the performance of HF radars while increasing their distances from the coast. The model employed is the MWM (Mediterranean Wind-Wave Model), providing a wind-wave dataset based on numerical models (the hindcast approach) and implemented in the study area with a 0.03° spatial resolution. The integration and comparison with the MWM dataset, carried out using wave parameters and spectral information, allowed us to analyze the availability and accuracy of HF sampling during the investigated period. The statistical comparisons highlight agreement between the model and the HF radars during episodes of sea storms. The results confirm the potential of HF radar systems as long-term monitoring observation platforms, and allow us to give further indications on the seasonality of sea storms under different meteorological conditions and on their energy content in semi-enclosed coastal areas, such as the Gulf of Naples.