WAVE CLIMATE SWELL SYSTEMS

A wave system is considered as the long-term climate conditions prevailing over a frequency-direction wave energy area collecting similar environmental and physical characteristics.

This viewer shows the resulting wave systems from the scientific publication: Mazzaretto, O. M., & Menendez, M. (2024). A worldwide coastal analysis of the climate wave systems. Frontiers in Marine Science, 11, 1385285.

The wave data analyzed to get the wave systems is the GOW (Global wave hindcast) directional wave spectra, from 1989 to 2020 each 3-hourly.

A more extensive guide is available in the Supplementary Material.

The interactive map below indicates the identified swell wave systems (Swell WSYs) along the coast worldwide. You can zoom in/out and hover a target coastal point to obtain more detailed information in a pop-up.

You can view the swell wave systems (Swell WSYs) but also toggle to the total wave systems, including the wind sea wave system information, by clicking on WSYs button (swells and wind sea) below.

Hold the regions

To see the information of each wave system (magnitude, direction, etc.) in detail through quivers you have to select a world region first (e.g., Europe). The arrows meaning is:

  • Color: identifies the relative energy (%) of each swell wave system related to the total energy of the swells, the colorbar show the intensity;
  • Size: represents the mean Tp;
  • Direction: represents the mean MWD.
In case you are interested in more than one world region, you can choose the option (Hold the regions).

WaveSystemViewer by IH-Cantabria (Ottavio Mattia Mazzaretto) is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0