Abstract
This paper presents a review of the last six years of sea states measurements at the SEMREV test site, compared to latest capabilities in term of wave modelling in a macro-tidal coastal environment [Tolman et al. (2014), Ardhuin et al. (2012)]. This work takes advantage of the HOMERE high-resolution hindcast data set [Boudiere et al. (2013)] for long term analysis, as well as an in house modelling chain based on a similar approach for more specific requirements over the measurement period. The grid refinement is led by a local unstructured mesh and an appropriate coupling and nesting from global to local scales. The retrieval of astronomic tidal harmonics at grid nodes from a one-year high resolution hydrodynamic coastal mo delling over the area [Pineau-Guillou et al. (2013)] enables to force at low com putational cost both levels and currents impacting the advection of the wave components in the sea state model. The paper provides a brief overview of the properties of the site inferred from the measurement and model capabilities, including the scores of both hindcast chains, the influence of the tidal forcing over the modelling and measurements or the spatial variability on site.
A special attention is paid in this study to the series of storms striking during winter 2014. The return period of the several singular events is checked against the previously estimated extrapolation method at SEMREV [Le Crom et al. (2013 )], as well as the return period of this whole sequence of severe conditions. One of the severe event, significant by the combination of high Hs and long period, is specifically analysed in term of 1 and 2D spectral distributions. This overall demonstrates the capabilities of a fully archived hindcast dataset associated to the latest and more physical accounting for source terms.