STORM WAVES IN THE CANADIAN ATLANTIC - A NUMERICAL-SIMULATION

The Grand Banks and the Scotian Shelf regions of the Canadian Atlantic often experience strong winds and high waves associated with the pass age of intense storms during the winter months of December to March. T hese storm waves are identified as a major hazard to shipping, offshor e exploration and other marine activities in eastern Canada. In this s tudy, an operational spectral ocean wave model has been used to simula te sea-states associated with selected storm events in the Canadian At lantic. The wave model operates on a grid (with grid spacing of about 111 km) which covers a major portion of the north Atlantic. A nested f ine grid (with grid spacing of about 37 km) has been designed which co vers the shelf regions of the Canadian Atlantic. The model employs dee p-water physics over the coarse grid while over the fine grid shallow- water processes as represented by wave refraction, wave shoaling, bott om friction and wave number scaling are included. The wave model also includes, as an optional package, the third-generation source terms as represented by the nonlinear wave-wave interaction terms. For two sel ected storm events, the model generated sea-states are evaluated again st available buoy data as well as against hand analyzed operational wa ve height charts over the northwest Atlantic. The evaluation shows tha t the various versions of the model can simulate the observed sea-stat es, reasonably well. The utility of the wave model in providing numeri cal guidance for offshore activities is briefly discussed.