A new wave hindcast for the North and Baltic Sea region using COSMO-REA6

Wave hindcasts are still required as improved knowledge of climate variables representing the present marine climate are needed. Most long regional wave hindcasts are driven by numerically downscaled wind fields from global reanalysis. Whereas this approach gives a good representation of the regional wave climate in general, there are some deficits in the characteristics of extreme events. Using regional atmospheric reanalysis, which assimilates atmospheric observations into the numerical model, a better description of extreme events is expected. The regional atmospheric reanalysis COSMO-REA6 from the German Weather Service (DWD) showed that it is capable of a better representation of atmospheric extreme events. For the new regional wave hindcast, covering the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, we use the COSMO-REA6 to force the wave model WAM. It is shown, that his new wind hindcast leads to an improved representation of extreme wave events compared to other regional wave hindcasts and thus supports an important contribution to the understanding of the wave climate of extremes and for the design phase of offshore activities.