Australia Significant Wave Height

About Wave Watch III

WAVEWATCH III? (Tolman 1997, 1999a, 2009) is a third generation wave model developed at NOAA/NCEP in the spirit of the WAM model (WAMDIG 1988, Komen et al. 1994). It is a further development of the model WAVEWATCH, as developed at Delft University of Technology (Tolman 1989, 1991a) and WAVEWATCH II, developed at NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center (e.g., Tolman 1992). WAVEWATCH III?, however, differs from its predecessors in many important points such as the governing equations, the model structure, the numerical methods and the physical parameterizations.

WAVEWATCH III? solves the random phase spectral action density balance equation for wavenumber-direction spectra. The implicit assumption of this equation is that properties of medium (water depth and current) as well as the wave field itself vary on time and space scales that are much larger than the variation scales of a single wave.