Establishment and data analysis of sea-state monitoring system along Taiwan coast.

Abstract

Taiwan Island is at the joint of Eurasian Continent and Pacific Plate, under threatening of typhoons and northeasterly strong winds. Consequently, enormous human lives and properties are lost every year. It is necessary to develop a coastal sea-state monitoring system. This paper introduces the coastal sea-state monitoring system (CSMS) along Taiwan coast. The COMC (Coastal Ocean Monitoring Center in National Cheng Kung University) built the Taiwan coastal sea-state monitoring system, which is modern and self-sufficient, consisting of data buoy, pile station, tide station, coastal weather station, and radar monitoring station. To assure the data quality, Data Quality Check Procedure (DQCP) and Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) were developed by the COMC. In further data analysis and data implementation of the observation, this paper also introduces some new methods that make the data with much more promising uses. These methods include empirical mode decomposition (EMD) used for the analysis of storm surge water level, wavelet transform used for the analysis of wave characteristics from nearshore X-band radar images, and data assimilation technique applied in wave nowcast operation. The coastal sea-state monitoring system has a great potential in providing ocean information to serve the society.