CAWCR Wave Hindcast - Aggregated Collection

Brief description

Ocean wave hindcast, ongoing and updated monthly from 1979 to present. The 1979-2010 data was generated using the WaveWatch III v4.08 wave model forced with NCEP CFSR hourly winds and daily sea ice (see http://doi.org/10.4225/08/523168703DCC5). January 2011 - May 2013 was generated using the WaveWatch III v4.08 wave model forced with NCEP CFSv2 hourly winds and daily sea ice (see http://doi.org/10.4225/08/52817E2858340). June 2013 onward was generated using the WaveWatch III v4.18 wave model forced with NCEP CFSv2 hourly winds and daily sea ice. The dataset contains spectral wave output at 3683 points, as well as gridded outputs on a global 0.4 degree (24 arcminute) grid, with nested Australian and western Pacific subgrids of 10 and 4 arcminutes resolution. For further information, see Durrant, T., Greenslade, D., Hemer, M. and Trenham, C. 2014. A Global Wave Hindcast focussed on the Central and South Pacific CAWCR Technical Report No. 070. N.B. January 1979 is a "model spin-up" month and data from this month should not be used for research purposes. Spectral wave parameters output: time; station; longitude; latitude; frequency; frequency1; frequency2 (centre, upper and lower bands); direction; Efth (sea surface wave directional variance spectral density); depth; u10m; udir (wind speed and direction 10m above surface); curr; currdir (sea water speed and direction). Gridded parameters output: longitude; latitude; time; MAPSTA (status map) ; U10; V10 (Eastward and Northward wind); CI (sea ice area fraction) ; hs (significant wave height); wl (mean wave length) ; t02 (mean wave period Tm02); t (mean period Tm01); tm0m1(mean period Tm0-1); CgE (wave energy flux); fp (peak wave frequency); dir (mean wave direction); spr (directional spread); dp (peak direction); hs0; hs1; hs2; hs3 (significant wave height partitions); tp0; tp1; tp2; tp3 (peak period partitions); lp0; lp1; lp2; lp3 (mean wave length partitions); th0; th1; th2; th3 (mean wave direction partitions); si0; si1; si2; si3 (directional spread partitions); ws0; ws1; ws2; ws3 (wind sea fraction partitions); wsf (wind sea fraction); pnr (number of wave partitions); dtd (dynamic time step); uust; vust (eastward, northward friction velocities); cha (Charnock coefficient); faw (wind to wave energy flux); utaw; vtaw (eastward, northward wave supported wind stress); utwa; vtwa (eastward, northward wave to wind stress); wcc (whitecap coverage); Sxx; Syy; Sxy (radiation stress components); utwo; vtwo (eastward, northward wave to ocean stress); uuss; vuss (eastward, northward surface stokes drift). Please note that the licensee/user is required to acknowledge the source of this data on the following terms: 'Source: Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO © 2013'. Apart from dealings under the Copyright Act 1968, the licensee shall not reproduce (electronically or otherwise), modify or supply (by sale or otherwise) this data without written permission. Please contact CSIRO CSIROEnquiries@csiro.au or BoM climatedata@bom.gov.au for more information.

Lineage

The hindcast was performed using the WAVEWATCH III(TM) model, 1970 - May 2013 used version 4.08, June 2013 onward used version 4.18. The model was run on a 0.4 x 0.4° global grid with a series of nested grids of 10 arcminutes (~18km) down to 4 arcminutes (~7km) in the Western Pacific and Australian regions. Wave spectra were discretised over 29 frequencies exponentially spaced from 0.038 Hz to 0.5 Hz and 24 directions with a constant 15° directional resolution. For 1979 - 2010 all grids were forced with Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) surface winds at 0.3° spatial and hourly temporal resolution. For 2011 onward all grids were forced with Climate Forecast System Reanalysis v.2 (CFSv2) surface winds at 0.2° spatial and hourly temporal resolution. Hourly sea ice concentrations from the CFSR and CFSv2 data sets for the respective time periods were also used to define the ice edge. Data output in NetCDF4 format.

CAWCR Wave Hindcast pre-June 2013 ERRATA
Issued 21/09/2020.
Wave data pre-June 2013 was created with an early release of WAVEWATCHIII (v4.08).
Note that pre-June 2013 variable 't' should not be used.
Pre-June 2013, Variable ‘t’, named mean wave period using the first spectral moment is a duplicate of variable ‘tm0m1’ mean wave period using the first inverse spectral moment.
Post-June 2013 (inclusive), Variables ‘t01’ represent mean wave period using the first spectral moment, and ‘t0m1’ represents mean wave period using the first inverse spectral moment with no issues.
Several other variable names changes took place during the upgrade.