Wave energy metric
-
Does the wave energy metric take account of currents?
We just crossed the Atlantic in our sailing boat and used Windy for all our weather information. We looked at wind, waves, swell and currents. Twice we passed through areas of zero current on your app, but with a full moon, we saw in reality, a counter current in these locations. With gradient winds above 30kts, the waves were dramatically increased in size. Does the new waves energy metric consider this?
We were discussing this with friends on arrival saying that we needed a roughness metric that could consider, cross swell, wind blown waves and counter currents. It would have been super useful on our ocean crossing -
@timevans2000
In a similar thread (in French, but the screenshots are useful if you don’t read it) I refer to an old post explaining that ECWAM do not take the current into account for waves forecasting, unlike the WWW3/GFS WAVE model, which does. However, this proves inaccurate if you check the Aghulas Current or the Gulf Stream. Therefore we cannot see any effect of current on wave height forecast by wave models, including by the American model.Concerning a area of current that you saw at sea but not in Windy map, note that the resolution of the current forecast is quite coarse as shown in this post
Does the wave energy metric take account of currents?
Further to your question, if the wave models don’t include the current effect for wave heights, they don’t do it too for wave power. I don’t think that this metric is useful for sailing, or only very close to the coast in shallow waters. It is useful for surf, kite surf and for coast erosion. The power is related to the wave height and to the period. Long period swell is not dangerous in the open sea. A tsunami wave, the most powerful wave, is not dangerous when sailing in open sea, but much more on sea shore where it can be catastrophic.
Additional information about wave power -
@idefix37
Hello, Perhaps it'll be interesting to propose a scale of the values, ( who is able to well now those tree levels?) When you set the mouse pointer on the energy value of the waves at a given point.
exemple:
Ordres de grandeur :
Conditions Puissance
Petite mer 2–5 kW/m
Mer formée 20–40 kW/m
Grosse houle > 60 kW/m
( from Chat GPT) -
@TY-MYLINE
Hi,
I don’t agree with this pseudo scale.
Wave energy/power is a parameter useful on seashore for surf activity and coast erosion.
But it provides no indication on the sea state at sea.
It's much more useful to consider the significant wave and swell height and period.
To help you understand my statement, consider that the waves with the highest energy/power are those caused by a tsunami. At sea, however, we don't feel them and they can be only 40cm high, but they cause devastating damage to coastlines.
Sorry, but in French “une mer formée ou une grosse houle”, i.e. “a rough sea or a heavy swell” are not characterised by the wave power levels.
So sometime ChatGPT is not right.
