Wave Information Study

Updates/Changes

IMPORTANT NOTICE
WIS Users - Great Lakes: Lake Ontario

• July 2024:
  - The 2023 Hindcast has been applied.
  - For Ontario stations 91092 and 91192, estimates start in March 1979. Jan and Feb will not be added later.
  - June 1979 is missing for Ontario stations 91264 and 91265. These may be addressed.
• September 2023: The 2022 Hindcast has been applied.
• March 2023: The 2021 Hindcast has been applied.
• February 2023: Most nearshore stations should now have the full complement from 1979-2020.
• October 2022: The 2020 Hindcast has been uploaded. Most nearshore stations should have a partial complement from 2013-2020. Additional years will be added.

Older updates

• 05/12/2015: The Wave Information Study completed a one year update (1 January 2013 through 1 January 2014) of the Lake Ontario wave hindcast. All output products were regenerated and posted. The continuous hindcast zipped file now spans the period from 1979 through 2014.
• 11/20/2013: The Wave Information Study is pleased to announce the posting of the new Lake Ontario Wave Hindcast. The period of record spans from 1979 through 2012. Hourly wave estimates (included are wind speed and direction) are provided and downloadable. All previous versions of the WIS Lake Ontario Hindcast have been replaced with the vastly improved hindcast.
  
  The wave model WAM (see Komen et al., 1994) is the technology used for the simulations. The model was run on a 0.02-deg fixed spherical grid. Shallow water effects were applied. Wind fields derived from the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR, 1979 - 2010, Saha et al., 2010, AMS BAMS, Aug 2010, 1015-1057). The wind fields were spatially interpolated to the wave model grid. The temporal resolution of the CFSR wind fields was 1-hr.
  
  Initial forensic testing indicated the CFSR wind fields were biased low. This analysis was based on multi-decadal point-source measurements either at surface buoy locations or from land-based meteorological stations in close proximity to the lake proper. The evaluation indicated there was only a dependency on the magnitude in the winds. There was no directional or seasonal dependency in the deviations. These adjustments were made and the revised winds used in the hindcast.
  
  During the winter months daily ice concentration fields are also applied to the wave model simulations using the NOAA Great Lakes Ice Atlas, Assel, 1973, http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/ice/atlas/ ). A total of 265 special output locations were selected covering the US and Canadian coastlines. Extensive evaluation of the model results were performed using all available point source measurements (e.g. NOAA/National Data Buoy Center, and Environment Canada).
  
  Full documentation of the hindcast including model set-up wind, ice processing and the evaluation will be forthcoming.
• 10/12/2012: A user of the Wave Information Study identified erroneous extreme wave height estimates for a station in Lake Ontario. We indentified the following stations containing at most two bad records. These records were corrected and all products were regenerated and posted.
  
  

  ST91007 ST91011 ST91050 ST91069 ST91113

  ST91126 ST91138 ST91139 ST91160 ST91167

  ST91175 ST91187 ST91292 ST91303