TRACKING AND SPATIOTEMPORAL CHARACTERISTICS ANALYSIS OF OCEAN WAVE SYSTEMS: A CASE STUDY OF THE SOUTHEAST PACIFIC OCEAN

Ocean surface waves are typically multimodal and comprised of wind sea and swell trains from different meteorological events. Spectral partitioning techniques allow for the efficient separation and parameterization of wave systems within the spectrum. However, these techniques are primarily applied to point spectrum analysis, and the identified wave systems are typically arranged according to the magnitude of their energy (e.g., wind sea is labeled as 0 and swell systems are labeled as 1-N). This implies that the number of wave systems and the label of the wave system with the same origin are frequently inconsistent in adjacent (temporal/spatial) spectra. Therefore, it is challenging to analyze the spatial and temporal characteristics of a particular wave system from these intricate data. Based on the feature that the parameters of the wave systems originating from the same source (e.g., a storm) have spatial/temporal continuity, the origins of wave systems are tracked back and the wave system with the same origin are clustered to reconstruct the spatiotemporal correlation of wave systems. The accuracy of the wave system tracking results is verified by comparing them with the reanalyzed wind field data.