Wave Analysis for West Coast of South Myanmar

Abstract

The characteristic of southern parts of Myanmar is tropical monsoon climate, and this area is affected by few typhoons. The wave height is changed with season, the field measured data shows that the aver-age monthly maximum wave height is in June. The wave height, swelling from Indian Ocean and spreading to research area, is small. The research adopts SWAN model to simulate the waves that are transformed from off-shore to nearshore Myanmar based on the meteorological data from ECMWF. The simulated results were com-pared with satellite data and field measured data, it showed that the trend between the curves is unified, and the extreme value of simulation is close to the measured value. The simulation presents wave distribution around Myanmar southern sea, it shows that the wave height and wave directions are affected by terrain refraction and island trains shielding. When the wave is from WSW direction, the wave will be decreased fast caused by island shielding, and the direction turns to W direction at northern coastline. When the wave comes from SSW direction, the island shielding will be weak, the wave will be decreased slowly, and the direction will turn to SW direction at southern coastline.

Keywords

• typhoon
• monsoon
• satellite
• SWAN