Wave Extremes in the Northeast Atlantic

Abstract

The objective of this study is to compute 100-yr return value estimates of significant wave height using a new hindcast developed by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. This regional hindcast covers the northeast Atlantic and spans the period 1958–2009. The return value estimates are based upon three different stationary models commonly applied in extreme value statistics: the generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution, the joint GEV distribution for the r largest-order statistic (rLOS), and the generalized Pareto (GP) distribution. Here, the qualitative differences between the models and their corresponding confidence intervals are investigated.