EVALUATIONANDIMPLEMENTATIONOFTHENEARSHOREWAVEPREDICTION

SYSTEM(NWPS)FORTHEMEXICANCOASTS

M.AlejandraLira-Pantoja,InstitutodeIngeniera,UNAM,Mxico,MLiraP@ii.unam.mx
ChristianM.,Appendini,InstitutodeIngeniera,UNAM,Mxico,CAppendiniA@ii.unam.mx
Roberto,Padilla-Hernndez,NOAA,USA,roberto.padilla@noaa.gov

Although the economic activities related with the
ocean have become very important in Mexico, a
systematic, continuous, long term monitoring program of
ocean waves does not exist. While there have been
effortstocharacterizethewaveclimate(Ruiz-Martnezet
al. 2009 and Appendini et al. 2014) to generate critical
information for the design of coastal and offshore
projects,theonlypublicinformationforwavepredictionin
MexicoistheoneprovidedbytheCenterforAtmospheric
Sciences of the National Autonomous University of
Mexico (UNAM). Still, its low resolution doesnt allow its
use for operational purposes. This study presents a high
resolution wave prediction system for Mexican coasts in
ordertoprovidereliableforecastsforcoastalactivities.
The Nearshore Wave Prediction System (NWPS)
wasdevelopedbytheNationalCentersforEnvironmental
Predictions(NCEP)toprovidereliableforecastsintheUS
coastalwaters(Westhuysenetal.2011).TheNWPSwas
designed to function in a local way using the Simulating
Waves Nearshore (SWAN) model as a central model,
(Booij et al. 1999). The group that has developed the
NWPS has considered imperative to test the system in
other parts of the world, hence the importance of
implementing it in the coasts of Mexico. Five coastal
areas over which the system was implemented in high
resolution were selected based on theirscientific interest
andtheiroperationalimportanceforcoastalactivities.
The work was divided in three stages: i)
implementationoftheNWPStoaregionalandlocallevel
over the North Atlantic, Gulf of Mxico, Caribbean Sea
andthe5studyareas,ii)validationandcalibrationofthe
modelandiii)evaluationofitsperformanceasaforecast
wave model. Following is a brief description of each
stage.
i)The extension of the prediction domain has to
cover the most important fetch areas offshore. To solve
this,asystemofnestedgridswasimplemented(Figure1)
in which the coarser domain (20 resolution) covers the
Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean and North Atlantic, and
provides boundary conditions to the nested high
resolution grids (5) over the Gulf of Mexico and
Caribbean sea, which in turn provides boundary data for
the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico and Mexican
Caribbean Sea (1) and finally for the local grids (10).
Withthis,thefinergridareasaccountforlocalbathymetry
changes to a smaller scale. The ETOPO1 Arc-Minute
GlobalReliefModel(Amante,C.andB.W.Eakins,2009)
was used for the domain over the coarser grid. For the
intermediate domains, nautical charts were used. For
local areas, bathymetric surveys were used when
availableandnauticalchartswhenunavailable.
ii) The model was first implemented in hindcast
mode in order to calibrate and validate the results. For
this, the wind fields from the Climate Forecast System
Reanalysis(CFSR)(Suranjanaetal.,2010)wereusedas
forcing to the wave model. Once the NWPS was
implemented over the domains, the results were
compared against wavedata from the42001,42055 and
42056 buoys of the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC),
anADCPlocatedintheYucatancoastandother2buoys
located in Tuxpan and Veracruz. The system was
validatedwiththebuoydataindeepwaterprovidinggood
estimatesbasedonstatisticalparameters.
iii) Finally, the model was set to forecast mode,
in which the forcing wind fields corresponded to the
Global Forecast System (GFS). The NWPS started a
prediction cycle every 6 hours, with forecasting time
windowsfrom96to120hoursperrun.
Themodelwassuccessfullycalibratedformean
and extreme wave climates, including both tropical
cyclones and Nortes (high pressure cold front systems).
Theassessmentoftheforecastshowsacceptableresults
up to a 48 hours window, the performance is inferior for
longer forecast periods. Still, the system provides
important information not only for wave bulk parameters
but for energy spectrum information and wave tracking.
The system is planned to operate continuously and used
as an important source for planning of coastal projects
andmaritimeoperations.

Figure1Nestedgridsoverthecomputationaldomain
REFERENCES
Amante, Eakins (2009): ETOPO1 1 Arc-Minute Global
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