Estimating return values of significant sea wave heights in Colombo, Sri Lanka

Abstract

In coastal science and offshore engineering estimating the return values of significant extreme sea wave heights plays a vital role. This paper discusses two methods, Block Maxima (BM) approach and Peak-Over- Threshold (POT) method to estimate the 50 and 100 year return levels of extreme sea wave heights in Colombo. Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution and Generalized Pareto (GP) distribution were fitted to the BM data and POT data respectively. Parameters of GEV and GPD were estimated with Maximum Likelihood estimation method. Gumbel distribution fitted well with the BM approach and GP distribution fitted well with the POT approach.BM method and POT method gives much more comparable results on estimating return values.