Product User Guide for the High-Resolution Unstructured Wave Hindcast Along the Australian Coast

Product user guide for the high-resolution unstructured wave hindcast along the Australian coast Xianghui Dong1,2, Qingxiang Liu1,2, Alexander V. Babanin1 1College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Ocean University of China, China 2Department of Infrastructure Engineering, University of Melbourne, Australia Email: [email protected] (X. Dong); [email protected] (Q. Liu); [email protected] (A. Babanin) May 1, 2025 1 Wave parameters The high-resolution unstructured wave hindcast along the Australian coast was conducted using the spectral wave model WAVEWATCH III, incorporating the observation-based source term package ST6 and a national-scale unstructured mesh with spatial resolutions ranging from 1 to 15 km. In the complex Great Barrier Reef region, the mesh was further refined to a 1 km resolution, and a subgrid-scale reef parameterization was implemented to account for wave attenuation and improve model accuracy. The final mesh consists of 185,285 nodes and 348,631 elements. For more detailed information, please refer to the main text of this study. 1.1 Gridded output (Unst1km_Grd) The field wave parameters are stored on a national unstructured triangular grid with a temporal resolution of 3 hours. Table 1 summarises all the wave parameters that are available in the hindcast. Table 1: Wave parameters available in the wave hindcast File name Definition 1) Forcing fields wnd wind speed u10,v10 (m s−1) cur tidal current velocity ucur,vcur (m s−1) wlv water levels wlv (m) Continued on next page 1 Table continued from previous page File name Definition 2) Standard mean wave parameters hs significant wave height Hs(m) lm mean wave length Lm(m) t02 wave period T0,2(s) t0m1 wave period T0,−1(s) t01 wave period T0,1(s) fp peak frequency fp(Hz) dir mean wave direction θm(°) spr directional spreading σθ(°) dp peak direction θp(°) 4) Spectral partition parameters for wind sea and up to 3 swell systems “?” below represents the identifier number for a given partition, where ? = 0, 1, 2, 3 denote wind sea, primary swell, secondary swell, and tertiary swell, respectively. phs? significant wave height Hs(m) ptp? peak wave period Tp(s) plp? peak wave length Lp(m) pdir? mean direction θm(°) pspr? directional spreading σθ(°) pws? wind sea fraction of the given partition W(-) pdp? peak direction θp(°) pqp? Goda peakedness parameter of partition Qp(-) ppe? JONSWAP peak enhancement factor of partition γ(-) ptm10c? wave energy period TE(i.e., T0,−1) (s) pt01c? wave period T0,1(s) pt02c? wave period T0,2(s) tws wind sea fraction of the entire spectrum (-) 5) Atmosphere-waves layer cge energy flux CgE(kW m−1) 6) Wave-Ocean layer tus Stokes volume transport (m2s−1) uss surface Stokes drift (m s−1) 8) Spectrum parameters mss (down-wave & cross-wave) mean square slope ⟨s2⟩(-) msd mean square slope direction (°) msc Phillips tail constant (spectral tail level) (-) mcd tail slope direction (°) 2 1.2 Point output (Unst1km_Pnt) Two-dimensional wave spectra are archived at selected buoy locations and during specific time periods to match the observational records provided by the Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN). Some buoys may change their locations many times during their lifetime because of redeployment. Therefore, one should check the data files (i.e., ww3_yyyymm_spec.nc) to get the specific locations and duration of each buoy. Additionally, the hindcast provides wave spectral data at 2,001 spatial points across the model domain, covering the entire simulation period (from 1979). The spatial resolution is 0.5° × 0.5°, with further refinement to 0.25° ×0.25° in key areas such as Sydney and Melbourne (see Fig. 1). All point outputs are provided with a temporal resolution of 1 hour. Figure 1: Point output locations on the regular 0.5° × 0.5° grid, with red polygons highlighting key regions where the resolution is refined to 0.25° ×0.25°. 3 2 Access to the hindcast (Data Mover) The wave hindcast product is stored at the Mediaflux platform, maintained by the Research Computing Services (RCS) at the University of Melbourne. The corresponding project is proj_4320_ww3_st6_unstructured_australia_hindcast-1128.4.1180. When you click on the specific shareable link (Section 2.1), the Data Mover client will launch automatically if it is already installed; otherwise, your web browser will prompt you to download the installer. Once launched, the Data Mover presents a simple GUI (Fig. 2) for downloading data. Figure 2: Data Mover GUI Figure 3: File Download List within the Data Mover Clien 4 Alternatively, you can install the Data Mover client manually. After launching it, click the “Add new” button and paste the shareable link to begin the download process. Once you have accessed the download list (Fig. 3), refer to Section 1for guidance on selecting data for specific time periods as needed. 2.1 Shareable Link for Data Download Unst1km_Grd : https://mediaflux.researchsoftware.unimelb.edu.au/mflux/data/mov er/index.html?token=kg48rxcqq76v15kvwwsfj2iqkvmijugyydjrqr2jq8gse yh4ojrt1nw0rg3dq2k70l23lv5klxose7z8nrm7eccvx47plvypfhpw0l41zwp8s no8fmnc1jwlo36uaj5os87by9ddzxgoxgwzgufkbw4sujby0dot2lkc40kzs1zvk 7q5fbaq45jf35lin1nmu6akj0o3oamskdrcvvcch4z85kqxnb6xeno7594a Unst1km_Pnt : https://mediaflux.researchsoftware.unimelb.edu.au/mflux/data/mov er/index.html?token=kg48rxcqq76v15kvwwsfj2iqkvmijugyydjrqr2jq8gse yh4ojrt1nw0rg3dq2k70l23lv5klxose7z8nrm7eccvx47plvyr8nflaaspsonu9 57fr6plibpb3b07hm60hx4ckcweezw7ngr2tv8grwro0891h2p2u85fkcwe1tu2k 19xx4yep3loy5oa0cvdr9rnz3o826fhi0jf0luu4a2lvni7y2ixh1189375 3 Feedback and Support If you find anything unclear or any problems in the dataset, please don’t hesitate to contact us. For specific data requests, feel free to reach out as well. If you encounter any issues installing or using the Data Mover, please refer to Data Mover Reference. 5