Evaluation of WAVEWATCH III performance with wind input and dissipation source terms using wave buoy measurements for October 2006 along the east Korean coast in the East Sea

In the winter, in the East Sea (ES), storm waves due to moving developed lows are frequently reported and cause extensive coastal disasters. During October 2006, there were extensive damages along the east Korean coast due to high storm waves induced by winter storms passing over the ES. This paper investigates the performance of a wave model, WAVEWATCH III, for the rough sea conditions in October 2006 with respect to the wind input and dissipation terms because the wave-breaking dissipation is the least known source term, which acts as a tuning knob for the closure of the action balance equation. Three package-like wind input-dissipation parameterizations, the WAM3 type (WAM-equiv), Tolman and Chalikov terms (TC96), and WAM4 type and its variant (WAM4+), are used experimentally for their performances under the same wind forcing obtained from atmospheric modelling with WRF. Overall, all experiments illustrate good accordance with observed wave characteristics. Among them, the WAM4+ results exhibit the best performance based on the Taylor diagram and index of agreement. In terms of dissipation behaviour, the TC96 results depict high energy losses at high frequency over 0.25 Hz, whereas the WAM-equiv runs display less dissipation at the same frequency. The WAM4+ results lie between those of the WAM-equiv and TC96.