ARTICLE
TITLE

On the Long-term Behaviour of Wind-Wave Climatology over the West Region of Scotland, UK

SUMMARY

Using 38 years (January 1973-December 2010) of hourly wind records, the present paper aims at drawing the possible long-term trends of winds and ten surface wave parameters over the west region of Scotland using the quadratic regression approach. Four dominant wind components were determined: the southern, the western, the south-western and the north-western. Two opposite groups of oscillations were proven: one for the southern groups and one for the western groups.The examined wave parameters were: the wave frequency, the wave angular frequency, the peak angular frequency, the wave spectral density, the significant wave height, the peak period, both the peak and group velocities and lastly the wave energy and the wave power. Results revealed that every examined parameter tended to have a cyclic behaviour except the wave spectral density, which appeared to be linearly decreasing. All wave frequencies were in an inverse correlation to the mean monthly wind speed. All other wave parameters appeared to be highly correlated to the mean monthly wind speed with correlation factors exceeding 0.95 except the wave power, which had a correlation factor of 0.89.In conclusion, the general behaviours of the dominant wind components over the west region of Scotland, and of the different wave parameters tend to be cyclic. A longer time series, than that presently used, will be advantageous in order to strengthen this outcome with more robust investigation. This concluded cyclic behaviour may positively impact on the engineering work within the wave energy resource off the western coasts of Scotland.

KEYWORDS

 Articles related

Gianni Zappala    

The concept and practice of Social Impact and Social Impact assessment has developed and matured over the last decade. Despite this growth, confusion still exists with respect to definitions of social impact as well as which tools and frameworks are most... see more


Diego Augusto de Jesus Pacheco    

The debate on eco-innovation, although recent, is gaining relevance in the practical context of business and academia. The purpose of this research is to identify the characteristics and determinants of eco-innovation in SMEs from a systematic review of ... see more


Dominic Reeve, Bin Li, Neil Thurston    

Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis (or Principal component analysis) has become an established technique for investigating interannual beach level fluctuations. In this paper, EOF techniques are applied to a series of historical bathymetric sur... see more


Michele Capobianco, Huib J. DeVriend, Robert J. Nicholls, Marcel J. F. Stive    

Long-term (> 10 years) prediction of morphological behaviour in the coastal zone in response to both direct and indirect human interference and projected climatic change is an increasingly important issue in coastal management. As our recognition of t... see more


Federico Ignacio Isla    

Mar Chiquita microtidal inlet is subject to seasonal periods of summer sand availability and winter scarcity. In the long-term trend the coast is erosive although the se environments were deposited in the last 5,000 years due to a sea-level fluctuation o... see more