Estimation of Extreme Coastal Wave Heightsfrom Time Series of Wave Data

A method is presented to extrapolate a time series of wave data to extreme wave heights. The 15-year time series of deepwater wave data collected for 34 min every hour from 1988 to 2002 in the South Pacific Ocean, Australia, is analyzed to generate a set of storm peak wave heights by use of the Peaks-Over-Threshold method. The probability distribution is calculated by grouping the observod storm peak wave heights into a number of wave height classes and assigning a probability to each wave height class. The observed probability distribution is then fitted to eight different probability distribution functions and found to be fitted best by the Weibull distribution （a = 1.17）, nearly best by the FT-Ⅰ, quite well by the exponential, and poorly by the lognormal function based on the criterion of the sum of squares of the errors, SSE （H）. The effect of the threshold wave height on the estimated extreme wave height is also studied and is found insignificant in this study. The 95 % prediction intervals of the best-fit FT-Ⅰ , exponential and Weibull functions are also derived.