Climate patterns derived from ocean wave spectra

Abstract

The fact that ocean surface waves are an integrated effect of meteorological activity has the interesting consequence that the memory of the wave systems is larger than that of the wind and storms that generated them. At each single point the related information is stored as its wave spectrum, a matrix containing the energy distribution of wave systems with different origins in space and time. We describe the concept of spectral partitioning and the technique used to obtain spectral statistics, whose outcome we associate with the physical reality. Using long series of spectral data we derive information of the, possibly very far, generation zones climatologically connected at a confluent point. Working on the eastern equatorial Pacific we focus on the prominent effects of El Niño events, for which interactions of mesoscale phenomena are revealed from the analysis of the local situation.