Enayam Port

Tamil Research Institute
RAPID TECHNO-ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY REPORT FOR
DEVELOPMENT OF COLACHEL PORT AT TAMILNADU
FINAL REPORT
7. SITE INVESTIGATION STUDIES
7.1. MET-OCEAN DATA
7.1.1. Introduction
The aim of this section is to define the wave climate in coastal areas at certain locations near the area of study.
To design the port structures, the offshore wave climate and its propagation to shallow water areas must be
characterized.
The most important objectives are:
• Characterization of the offshore wave climate by analyzing the reanalysis databases from 1950 – '14
• A maximum dissimilarity selection algorithm (MDA) is applied in order to obtain a representative subset of
sea states in deep water areas. The reduced number of selected cases spans the marine climate
variability, guaranteeing that all possible sea states are represented and capturing even the extreme
events.
• These sea states are propagated using a wave propagated model (SWAN) to shallow water areas.
• The time series of the propagated sea state parameters at a particular location are reconstructed using a
non-linear interpolation technique based on radial basis functions (RBFs).
• Characterization of wave climate in shallow water at a particular location.
7.1.2. Data Sources
Wind, wave and tide data is obtained through third generation hindcasting models named Climate Forecast
System Reanalysis (CFSR), for winds, and WaveWacth 3 (WW3) for waves. The following sections give further
information on each:
• Winds
The Climate Forecast System (CFS) is a model representing the global interaction between the Earth's oceans,
land, and atmosphere developed by the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). It is a global
third generation reanalysis product. The CFSR is a high resolution, coupled atmosphere-ocean-land surface-sea
ice system designed to provide the best estimate of the state of these coupled domains over the period from
1979 to 2010 (Saha et al., 2010).
The Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) is an effort to generate a uniform, continuous, and best-estimate
record of the state of the ocean-atmosphere for use in climate monitoring and diagnostics. CFSR stands out by its
high resolution and advances in data assimilation techniques. Here, the near-surface winds from CFSR are freely
provided.
• Waves:
The wave generation is obtained by using the WW3 model and the NCEP/NCAR global wind and ice cover
databases. In order to check the performance of the wave generation model and the quality of the forcing fields,
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