Navigation hazards and rogue waves of the Eastern Mediterranean

ORAL

Abstract

We present a statistical analysis of the large waves and navigation hazards in the Eastern Mediterranean during the two most intense storms recorded in the last five years1. A comprehensive analysis of buoy measurements characterize the metocean properties and wave statistics of the observed sea states using state-of-the-art models, such as the Modified-Narrow-Band (MNB) and Generalized Boccotti distributions for crest and wave heights3,4. A novel space-time wave analysis2 is carried out for estimating potential hazards for ship navigation within the area under study. In particular, we consider the scenario of two types of vessels of the Israeli Navy Fleet and a cargo ship similar in size to El Faro2 navigating during the most intense sea states of the analyzed storms and provide predictions of the largest encountered waves. The probability that a fixed observer at a point of the ocean encounters a rogue wave of a sea state of significant wave height Hs exceeding the crest height 1.6Hs is approximately 1/105 as predicted by the best performing MNB model. All vessels have higher probabilities (1/100 to 1/30) to encounter a rogue wave exceeding the same threshold when maneuvering through the rough waters of the storms.

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Publication: 1. Knobler, S., Bar, D., Cohen, R. & Liberzon, D. (2022): Correction: Knobler et al. Wave Height Distributions and Rogue Waves in the Eastern Mediterranean. J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2021, 9, 660. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering 10, 482.

2. Fedele, F., Lugni, C. & Chawla, A. (2017): The sinking of the El Faro: Predicting real world rogue waves during Hurricane Joaquin. Scientific Reports-NATURE 7, 1–15.

3. Fedele F., J Herterich, A Tayfun, F Dias (2019): Large nearshore storm waves off the Irish coast. Scientific Reports-NATURE 9(1), 1-19.

4. Fedele F., Brennan J., Ponce de Leon S., Dudley J. and F. Dias (2016): Real world ocean rogue wave explained without the modulation instability, Scientific Reports-NATURE 6, 27715.

Presenters

  • Sagi Knobler

    • The Interdisciplinary Program for Marine Engineering, The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.

Authors

  • Sagi Knobler

    • The Interdisciplinary Program for Marine Engineering, The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.

  • Dan Liberzon

    • Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

  • Francesco Fedele

    • School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.