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. © 2012 American Meteorological Society.