Wave height statistics for seakeeping assessment of ships in the Adriatic Sea

The paper presents methodology and results of the development of sea states statistics for the Adriatic Sea. Such statistics is still lacking despite a need of the shipping industry. The presented study is based on the Atlas of Climatology containing statistics of sea states observations in the Adriatic Sea made by merchant ships during the period of 15 years. The results, presented in the Atlas in the form of “wave roses”, are digitalized and empirical frequencies of sea state occurrences are obtained. The 3-parametric Weibull distribution is then fitted through empirical data points enabling the “smoothening” of the histogram. The resulting histogram is compared with other studies for the long-term prediction of the sea states in the Adriatic Sea. The paper concludes with the discussion on the accuracy and applicability of the results.

► Wave statistics in the Adriatic Sea is developed based on the observations made by merchant ships.
► Resulting histogram of wave heights is compared with other studies showing good agreement.
► We found that significant wave heights between 0.5 and 1 m are the most frequent in the Adriatic Sea.
► Significant wave heights larger than 4 m were observed quite rarely by merchant ships.