Climate Change Impacts on Wave Characteristics along the Coast of Japan from 1986 to 2012

Duan, W.; He, B.; Takara, K.; Luo, P.; Hu, M.; Alias, N.E.; Ishihara, M., and Wang Y., 2014. Climate change impacts on wave characteristics along the coast of Japan from 1986 to 2012.

With the effects of the earth's climate change, ocean waves present various change trends in different areas. Using the linear trend method and the Mann-Kendall test, we analyzed the trends of the annual maximum significant wave height and period during the period of 1986–2012 on the basis of the 10 wave monitoring stations along the Sea of Japan coast. The correlation with climate change indexes including SST (sea surface temperature), MEI (Multivariate Enso Index), SOI (Southern Oscillation Index), AOI (Arctic Oscillation Index), PDOI (Pacific Decade Oscillation Index) and NPI (North Pacific Index) were also checked to fully understand the changes of wave characteristics. Generally, the annual maximum significant wave height and period increased at almost all stations along the Sea of Japan from 1986 to 2012. The Sakata station had the largest increase in the annual maximum significant wave height and period, which increased about 49.65 cm (approximately 1.84 cm yr-1) and 0.24 s (approximately 0.009s yr-1) from 1986 to 2012, respectively. The increasing tendency of the wave height and period was more apparent in the northeast areas along the Sea of Japan coast compared to the southwest areas. The annual maximum significant wave height and period had negative relationships with PDOI, SOI, MEI and AOI at most stations, while positive relationships with NPI and SST at most stations.