Experimental study on the stationarity of sea waves in the Mediterranean Sea

The possibility of improving physical ocean monitoring, thanks to technological developments recently implemented, that include the adoption of sensors that allow producing a complete, uninterrupted time series of wave measurement, has been carefully investigated, based on observations taken in area often exposed to severe sea states and thus relevant for coastal risk management and maritime safety. A stationarity analysis was performed, which showed that noteworthy variations in the significant wave height may occur during the standard 30 minutes observation time, thus proving the superiority of the evolutionary power spectral density (EPSD) analysis, over the more traditional power spectral density (PSD)