Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Significant wave height
Summary
In physical oceanography, the significant wave height (SWH, HTSGW or Hs)
is defined traditionally as the mean wave height (trough to crest) of the highest third of the waves (H1/3). It is usually defined as four times the standard deviation of the surface elevation – or equivalently as four times the square root of the zeroth-order moment (area) of the wave spectrum. The symbol Hm0 is usually used for that latter definition. The significant wave height (Hs) may thus refer to Hm0 or H1/3; the difference in magnitude between the two definitions is only a few percent.
SWH is used to characterize sea state, including winds and swell.
The original definition resulted from work by the oceanographer Walter Munk during World War II. The significant wave height was intended to mathematically express the height estimated by a "trained observer". It is commonly used as a measure of the height of ocean waves.
Significant wave height H1/3, or Hs or Hsig, as determined in the time domain, directly from the time series of the surface elevation, is defined as the average height of that one-third of the N measured waves having the greatest heights: where Hm represents the individual wave heights, sorted into descending order of height as m increases from 1 to N. Only the highest one-third is used, since this corresponds best with visual observations of experienced mariners, whose vision apparently focuses on the higher waves.
Significant wave height Hm0, defined in the frequency domain, is used both for measured and forecasted wave variance spectra. Most easily, it is defined in terms of the variance m0 or standard deviation ση of the surface elevation: where m0, the zeroth-moment of the variance spectrum, is obtained by integration of the variance spectrum. In case of a measurement, the standard deviation ση is the easiest and most accurate statistic to be used.
Another wave-height statistic in common usage is the root-mean-square (or RMS) wave height Hrms, defined as: with Hm again denoting the individual wave heights in a certain time series.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.