WIS
Wave Information Study
 CHL

ERDC

Update 9/07/23: The WIS Portal has been recently updated.

  • 2022 Hindcast for Alaska, Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes is now available.
  • Newly added - Dynamic generation of Extremes tables/plots (~8 mins), Mean-max tables (~5 mins), and 2d Spectra.
  • Newly added - Tool for extracting CMS-Wave model input from WIS Stations (beta-testing).

  • Issues have been found with the Level 4 southern California stations (84xxx) for 2021. This year has been removed for the affected stations and will be regenerated at a later time.

    • WIS Project Mission

    The Wave Information Study project provides a national resource of long-term wave climatologies for all U.S. coastal waters using high-resolution wind fields, mean daily ice concentration fields (where appropriate), third generation phase average wave modeling technologies, that are extensively evaluated to point-source measurements and satellite-based altimetry providing high quality wave estimates. The multi-decade hindcasts and storm event archives are generated to meet tomorrow's coastal engineering needs today.

    Problem

    • Knowledge of the wave climatology is required for planning, design, construction, and maintenance of USACE projects in the coastal zone
    • Information is scarce due to the lack of measurements at locations over timescales long enough to be statistically significant
    • This lack of information is a critical problem for USACE operations, and project maintenance near the coast

    Solution

    • Generation of long-term coastal wave estimates using spectral wave models forced by high quality wind fields, to retain continuity
    • Validate the model estimates to measurements
    • Provide easy access to the estimates and tailored products specific to project needs

    Impact

    • Fully automated hindcast system with limited manual intervention
    • Model simulations cost-effective compared measurements
    • Timely web site updates with new wave estimates

     

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    Point of Contact
    Dr. Candice Hall, PhD (CHL)
    WISinfo@usace.army.mil