100 year extremes of some ocean phenomena: Method and coastal California predictions

For many reasons, e.g., port operations, coastal construction planning, undersea structure survival, underwater transport, man wishes to know the extreme values that are likely to occur in physical oceanographic variables. This paper presents a hybrid statistics/computer simulation method that uses common oceanographic observations to estimate confidence levels on the most extreme values likely to occur over a given period in the future. The method is applied to the California coast for a period of 100 years on the following variables: wave height by water depth, wave length by water depth, wave period, bottom surge particle velocity by water depth, current velocity, regions of high density, regions of low density, and earthquake magnitude. Values are given for the 99 % and 99.9% probability levels.