CoAuthors

Lotfi Aouf (Météo-France, France); Héloïse Michaud (Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine, France)

The West Indies are highly concerned by high sea state with wind sea and swell generated by tropical cyclones and extra-tropical storms in the north-atlantic during winter season. To mitigate high waves risks in the coastal areas, it is then really needed to use finer wave model that solves accurately physical processes in shallow water. In the framework of the project HOMONIM the wave model Wavewatch III (WW3) with high resolution up to 200 m has been implemented at Météo-France for sea state forecasting in the french islands. The model has the advantage of using an unstructured grid which is very well dedicated to down-scaling and complicated coastline such as the caribbean islands. The high resolution coastal model will be operated in autumn 2016 and it is nested to the regional west indies wave model MFWAM. The model has been validated thanks to altimetry wave data. Runs of the coastal wave model have been performed for a period of 1 year starting from 2012 until 2013. Extreme events such hurricanes and swell generated by low pressure sytem in the north-Atlantic were investigated. Comparison with altimeters wave heights from Jason-2 and Saral showed a good performance of the coastal model. Moreover validation with high frequency altimeters wave data is also examined. Further discussions and conclusions will be commented in the final paper.