Future Changes in Gulf of Mexico Hurricane Wave Climatology

摘要

Meeting industry demand for assessments of future changes in Gulf of Mexico hurricane impacts is achallenge that extends well beyond simply improving climate prediction. Once the climate predictionshave been made, there remains a huge gap regarding how this affects industry. The National Center forAtmospheric Research is actively engaged in a collaborative project with the Research Partnership toSecure Energy for America, Chevron Energy Technology Company and Willis Re to align the latestclimate research with the requirements of industry.This paper explores methods to simulate and predict future changes in hurricane impacts on theoffshore energy industry. We first expand the concept of the Saffir-Simpson hurricane categorical scaleto include important characteristics of the wind field for damage including maximum wind speed, stormtranslation speed and size, in a new Cyclone Damage Potential index. The index is applied to simulatedcurrent and future hurricanes to assess future changes in hurricane damage potential.Loading on structures in the Gulf of Mexico is a complex function of not only characteristics of thewind field but also ocean characteristics including currents and waves. Simple empirical relationshipsbetween wind, wave and current miss some of the essential physics, particularly for extreme events. Toimprove upon the damage potential assessments we need to account for the full physical interactionsbetween wind, wave and current. This paper explores the ability of fully coupled atmosphere-oceandynamical simulations to capture metocean hurricane conditions through a case study simulation ofHurricane Katrina. This preliminary case study simulation establishes the simulation technology that willthen be used to build robust assessments of the 100-year load and its future change using a combinedtheoretical and dynamical-statistical approach.