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Ocean Engineering 38 (2011) 11741183

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Ocean Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/oceaneng

Modelling the inuence of currents on wave propagation at the entrance of the Tagus estuary
L. Rusu, M. Bernardino, C. Guedes Soares n
cnico, Portugal Centre for Marine Technology and Engineering (CENTEC), Technical University of Lisbon, Instituto Superior Te

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 11 July 2010 Accepted 15 May 2011 Editor-in-chief: A.I. Inceik Available online 8 June 2011 Keywords: Waves Currents Interactions Estuary Numerical models

a b s t r a c t
A study of the wave propagation and of the consequences of the inuence of currents on waves in the Tagus estuary is performed in the present work. For this purpose a high-resolution SWAN domain was coupled to a wave prediction system based on the two state of the art phase averaged wave models, WAM for wave generation and SWAN for nearshore wave transformation. The most important factors affecting the incoming waves are the local currents and the wind. These inuences were evaluated by performing SWAN simulations in the target area with and respectively without considering the tide level and tide induced currents. The model results were compared with wave measurements, validating in this way the results of the wave prediction system developed herewith. & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The Tagus estuary is a roughly a pear-shaped estuary, approximately 30 km long and varying in width from approximately 15 km at the northern upstream section to 2 km at the downstream entrance, just south of Lisbon, covering an area of approximately 350 km2. Morphologically the estuary can be divided into three parts: upstream, middle and downstream sections. The upstream area of the estuary is very shallow with an average depth of 2 m and with extensive inter-tidal ats. The middle part is deeper (average of 7 m), and the downstream part reaches depths of 46 m and is the main navigation channel of the estuary. This channel is 12 km long and 24 km wide. The bathymetry of the Tagus estuary, the target area of the present work, is illustrated in Fig. 1. This estuary is meso-tidal with spring and neap tide amplitudes of 1.5 and 0.6 m, and its circulation is mainly tidally driven. The wind is of secondary importance for estuarine circulation. In the entrance channel the current velocity may reach 2.5 m/s in spring tide. The circulation in the mouth of the estuary is also inuenced by the wave eld. In the study developed by Teles et al. (2003), the increasing of the wave penetration in the area at the entrance of the channel is discussed. This advanced penetration is veried for various incident directions producing the so called sea beatings, phenomenon which the pilots in the channel are encountering until

Corresponding author. E-mail address: guedess@mar.ist.utl.pt (C. Guedes Soares).

about the middle of the channel. In fact, the southern part of the channel is often exposed to waves. Most of the time, in the highest waves, the swell is the dominant component. However, strong winds are also characteristic in that area and they can induce locally generated wind seas. The nal conclusion resulting from the study of Teles et al. (2003) is that waves represent a determinant factor in the morpho-dynamic equilibrium in the downstream area. Various other studies such as, Oliveira (2000), Vieira and Bernardino (2005), Santos et al. (2007), were also performed. However, the inuence of currents on waves in the estuary was not included in those studies. As regards the processes associated with the wavecurrent interactions in coastal areas, an important role is played by the water level (either induced by storm surge, wave induced set up or tide). The water depth variation due to such causes has a direct impact on the wave modelling. There are several studies showing such importance in wavecurrent interactions as for example that of Liu and Xie (2009). The importance of a better understanding of the wave conditions in the channel is enhanced by the fact that this channel represents the principal connection between the Port of Lisbon and the ocean. Hence this sector is subjected to high navigation trafc and high current conditions can occur making the interactions between waves and currents quite relevant. In particular, at the entrance in the navigation channel of the Tagus estuary strong interactions occur between the incoming ocean waves and the tide induced currents because the narrow geometry of the channel makes the angles between wave directions and current directions to be either close to 01 for following currents or close

0029-8018/$ - see front matter & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.oceaneng.2011.05.016

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Fig. 1. The high resolution computational domainthe bathymetric map of the Tagus estuary corresponding to the mean tide level. The buoy location is marked with a white circle, while other point used in spectral analysis is marked with a red square. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

to 1801 for opposite currents. Along these directions maximum effect of currents on the incoming waves takes place. Motivated by this, Rusu and Guedes Soares (2007) have conducted a study on the wavecurrent interaction effects in the Tagus estuary, which provided information concerning the transformation of the wave spectrum due to the interactions with currents, but could not yet been validated. That study had as main objective to evaluate the possibilities of SWAN model applicability (Booij et al., 1999) into a high resolution area covering the entire estuary and to connect this computational domain to the wave prediction system that was previously tested and calibrated in Rusu et al. (2008a). The adequacy of the SWAN model to represent conditions of a current interacting with a wave eld was studied by Rusu and Guedes Soares (2011) in laboratory conditions in which it was possible to control the characteristics of both current and wave spectrum. The scope of the present work is to study the effects of currents on waves in the Tagus estuary, in which entrance the tidal currents can achieve a signicant velocity. The quantication of the interaction effects is accomplished through SWAN model simulations in which tide and current elds are considered, compared with simulations without considering these elds. Good agreement between the results of SWAN model simulations with current elds and observed wave data were also reported in other estuaries or inlets (Tozer et al., 2004; Moghimi et al., 2005; Van Dongeren et al., 2007), supporting the choice of SWAN for the present study. The system performance was evaluated using wave measurements coming from a directional buoy deployed at the entrance of the estuary.

Usually the quantity o is called observed or absolute frequency while s is the relative or intrinsic frequency whose functional dependence on k is known as the classical dispersion relationship. In the presence of variable currents the intrinsic frequency may vary in space and time. In such case the spectral energy density E will not be conserved. The quantity called wave action density, dened as N E=s, is conserved in a moving medium (Bretherton and Garrett, 1968) and that is why in SWAN, as in most of the third generation wave models, the governing equation is expressed in terms of spectral action instead of spectral energy. ! Thus, in SWAN the evolution of the action density N x , t ; s, y in ! space x and time t is governed by the spectral action balance equation: h i @N @ @ S ! ! r c g U N cs N c N @t @s @y y s 2

2. Theoretical background It is a very common situation to have the transformation of sea waves due to currents. If waves propagate on non-stationary and !! non uniform current U x , t changes of the amplitude, frequency and direction of waves occur, generally due to energy bunching, transfer of energy between waves and currents, frequency shifting and current induced refraction. If the medium is moving with ! the velocity U the frequency of wave system passing a eld point is shifted by the Doppler Effect:

where y is the wave direction and the velocity of the ambient current which is considered uniform with respect to the vertical coordinate. The left side of the above equation represents the kinematic part in which the rst term reects the time variation of the action density while the second term the propagation of wave energy (action density) in the geographical space. The propagation velocity of the wave energy in the two dimensional geogra! ! ! phical space is the group velocity c g ( c g @s=@ k ), while in the _. _ and cy y spectral space the propagation velocities are cs s The effect of shifting of the intrinsic frequency due to variations in depth and mean currents is represented by the third term, while the fourth term denotes the refraction effects (depth induced and current induced). On the right hand side of the action balance equation is the source S expressed in terms of energy density. This term represents all physical processes related with wave generation, dissipation and energy redistribution. For either large and small scale applications, this equation can be related to the spherical coordinates dened by longitude l and latitude f: @N @ 1 @ @ @ S c N c N cos f cs N c N @t @l l cos f @f f @s @y y s 3

o s k U U :

! !

When the waves propagate against an increasing current, they are blocked by the current and a rapidly increase of wave steepness and height is produced. At the blocking frequency, the wave action is partially transferred from the blocking frequency

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to higher and lower frequencies (Ris and Holthuijsen, 1997). The waves may enhance their wave height to a point at which they break. This can occurs when wave propagate into a tidal estuary or at mounts of rivers (Rusu and Guedes Soares, 2007).

3. The wave prediction system SWAN is a third-generation, phased-averaging wave model applicable at almost any scale, but most effective when predicting wave conditions for medium and small scales. It is capable of modelling coastal regions with shallow water, barrier islands, tidal ats, local winds and ambient currents. A triple-nested SWAN wave modelling system was used to simulate the wave propagation and the nested grids are shown in Fig. 2. The characteristics of the computational grids are presented in Table 1, while in Table 2 the physical processes activated in the SWAN computational domains are presented together with some computational details. An in depth description of the physical processes activated in the SWAN computational domains dened above is given in Rusu et al. (2008a, b). The boundary conditions for the large SWAN domain (denoted here as the Iberian wave driver) were provided hourly by simulations with an improved WAM version (WAMDI Group, 1988) that mez and Carretero, 1997). Some allows for two-way nesting (Go details on the model setting, as well as of some validations that were performed, are presented in Pilar et al. (2008). The WAM model was forced with the NCEP wind eld with 6 h time step. The wind input for the SWAN model simulations was provided by the MM5 atmospheric model (Dudhia et al., 2000; Grell et al., 1994) with 6 h time step. The Fifth-Generation NCAR/Penn State Mesoscale Model (MM5) is a limited-area, terrain-following sigma-coordinate model designed to simulate or predict mesoscale and regional-scale atmospheric circulation. The MM5 version 3.7 was used in the presented work to generate the wind elds. The model used 3 nested grids with horizontal grid resolution of 38, 12.33 and 4.1 km and 30 vertical levels. A two ways nesting scheme was used. The input meteorological data used for the MM5 initialisation were the National Centers for Environmental Protection (NCEP)/NCAR global reanalysis data, but no analysis or observation nudging scheme was used. The validation of the wind elds simulated by MM5 model in the Tagus estuary area is presented in Rusu et al. (2009).

Fig. 2. Coastal focusing of the wave prediction system towards the Tagus estuary. Table 1 Computational grids for the SWAN simulations. Grid S1Iberian driver S2Medium resolution S3High resolution S4Target area

Dx Dy (deg.)
0.05 0.1 0.01 0.01 0.003 0.003 0.002 0.002

Dt (s)
1200 1200 1200 1200

nf 30 30 30 30

nh 36 36 36 36

ngx ngy np 101 101 10 201 125 91 11 375 131 131 17 161 241 179 43 139 (11 563 comp. points)

Table 2 Details of the physics and computational options used in the SWAN model. Grid Bathymetry Wind eld resolutions (deg.) Boundary forcinghourly Numerical scheme Computation Wave generation Bottom friction Depth-induced breaking Triads and diffraction S1 S2 S3 S4

Equal to the computational grids 0.5 0.15 WAM SWANS1 S&L BSBT Non-stationary mode Janssen formulation with the growing coefcient activated JONSWAP formulation Activated

0.05 SWANS2 BSBT

0.05 SWANS3 BSBT

Activated

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In order to obtain wind data with regular spatial resolutions the wind elds computed by the MM5 model were interpolated using a triangle-based linear interpolation method. The resolutions of the wind elds corresponding to each SWAN computational domains are presented in Table 2.

4. Numerical studies on the effects of currents on waves 4.1. Direct comparison of time series of the wave parameters The measured wave data were provided by a directional buoy with the location 91230 0900 W/381370 2500 N, at the entrance of the Tagus estuary (Fig. 1) that is maintained by the authority of the port of Lisbon. The water depth at the buoy location is about 33 m. Some results concerning hourly measurements are available for the month of November and December 2003. The main wave parameters as signicant wave height, mean wave period (based on second moment of the wave spectrum) and mean wave direction computed from the directional spectra are presented in Fig. 3 (blue line). Unfortunately, no current measurements are available. Due to the fact that the buoy is located in a place where the tide induced currents are quite signicant, the wave parameters are obviously inuenced by the wavecurrent interactions. Tidal modulation was observed mainly for the mean period (blue line in the second plot of Fig. 3), as shown also by Wolf and Prandle (1999) in other location. In order to observe the space and time inuence of the currents on the wave parameters, model system simulations were performed for ve days in November 2003 and for another nineteen days in December 2003. Waves with Hs above 1 m were generally encountered in this time interval. Some storms were also presented when Hs reached values of up to 4 m. The model simulations in the target area were performed considering both the presence of currents and the tide induced bathymetric variations. The tide and tidal current elds considered in the model simulations represent the average hourly values corresponding to the same periods as resulting from the HIPOCAS project Hindcast of Dynamic processes of the Ocean and Coastal Areas of Europe (Guedes Soares et al., 2002; Guedes Soares, 2008), which has produced a database of 44 years (till 2001) of wind, sea-level, tide current and wave data. Two different simulations were performed with the SWAN model, without and with currents, respectively. Fig. 3 shows direct comparisons of the measured (blue line) and model predicted (without currentsgreen line, and with currentsred line) signicant wave heights (Hs), mean wave periods (Tm02) and mean wave directions (Dir). The dot line with black colour from the plots of the wave parameters marks the greater intervals when data are missing. Additional plots indicating the water level and the current velocity at the buoy location were included in Fig. 3. The inuence of the current elds on the wave parameters can be quantied by comparing the results of the simulations with currents, with those performed without considering the currents. The differences between the simulations (with and without current) and the observations were quantied through some standard statistical parameters such as bias (positive bias represent underestimates by the model), root mean square error (RMSE), scatter index (SI) and Pearsons correlation coefcient (r). Statistics computed for the main wave parameters are presented in Table 3, where n represents the number of observations, and (Bmed) and (Smed) are the average values for measurements and simulations, respectively. Statistics were computed for signicant wave height, mean wave period and mean wave direction. If Xi represent the

measured values and Yi the simulated values, the mentioned statistics can be dened with the following relationships: Pn Pn ~ i 1 Xi ; Smed Y ~ i 1 Yi ; Bmed X n n s Pn Pn 2 X Y i 1 Xi Yi RMSE ; Bias i 1 i i n n Pn ~ ~ RMSE i 1 Xi X Yi Y SI 4 ; r Pn 2 Pn ~ ~ ~ 2 1=2 X i 1 Xi X i 1 Yi Y The computed bias, root mean square error and scatter index for Hs and Tm02 can be considered good and in agreement with the values reported by Osuna and Monbaliu (2004) when currents were considered. For both wave parameters all the statistical results are better when ambient current elds were considered in the model simulations. Positive biases resulted for Hs in both cases (the model underestimated Hs), but when current elds were considered the bias was 0.085, which represent about 50% of the bias computed without considering currents. The trend was similar in the case of RMSE, an improvement of about 25% (from 0.303 to 0.225) resulted. Higher differences between the statistical parameters for the mean period Tm02 computed considering or not the current elds in wave model simulations, show that Tm02 is more sensitive to the presence of currents than Hs. When simulations without currents are carried out, positive bias results for Tm02 (0.153), while very small negative bias ( 0.007) results when current elds are used in wave model simulations. An important improvement of the correlation coefcient for Tm02 was observed when simulations with currents were carried out against simulations without currents (from 0.739 to 0.816). As in the case of Hs, RMSE was reduced with about 20% when current elds were considered. As regards the mean wave direction, the results are satisfactory for all the statistical parameters, with better results considering currents (except bias), but without important differences between two cases. 4.2. Spectral analysis For the analysis of some other aspects concerning the effect of currents on waves as for example wave spectrum transformation in the presence of the current, or tidal modulation of the high frequency wave direction, the 1D spectrum, measured and as resulted from the simulations without and with current at the buoy location, were compared and analysed. The simulations with and without currents for the cases corresponding to ebb tide situations (from 2003/11/06h15, 2003/12/04h01, and 2003/12/ 18h03) and ood tide situation (from 2003/12/11h14) are presented in Fig. 4. The variance density as a function of frequency is represented with solid blue line for measured data, dashed red line for the simulations with currents and dashdot green line for the simulations without currents. Using the same representation of the lines, the mean wave directions were represented for each frequency. The current direction and the wind direction are also represented in the gures. The current direction is always represented in this work as a from direction, opposite to the normal convention, for an easier comparison with the standard wind and wave from direction. The dominant direction of the tidal current at the buoy location is about 2401 for ood tide and 651 for ebb tide. In the header of each gure that represents the comparison between the 1D spectrum measured and simulated with and without currents the value of the current speed U is indicated, the positive values correspond to the following currents while the negatives value to the opposite currents. The wind speed denoted

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Fig. 3. Direct comparisons SWAN results without and with tide and currents against buoy. Parameters compared are signicant wave height Hs, mean wave period Tm02 and mean wave direction Dir. Additional plots indicate the water level and current velocity at the buoy location. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Table 3 Statistical results of the wave parameters. n 466 Without current Hs (m) Tm02 (s) Dir (deg.) With current Hs (m) Tm02 (s) Dir (deg.) Bmed Smed Bias RMSE SI r

1.736 6.993 265.9 1.736 6.993 265.9

1.561 6.840 266.04 1.651 7.000 266.1

0.174 0.153 0.144 0.085 0.007 0.212

0.303 1.221 8.440 0.225 0.971 7.830

0.175 0.175 0.032 0.130 0.130 0.029

0.924 0.739 0.887 0.946 0.816 0.899

as Vw is also indicated. In Table 4 the values of the mean wave parameters measured and simulated without and with current can be encountered. Guedes Soares and de Pablo (2006) presented the results of an experimental study concerning the wave spectrum transformation in the presence of a uniform current for the two situations considered above that is opposite and following current, respectively. Hence, it is expected that the results of the model simulations performed herewith to be in agreement with the experiments mentioned above. When the presence of currents is considered in the model simulations, changes in the spectral shape also occur as shown in

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Fig. 4. Comparison between 1D wave spectra measured and simulated without and with currents at the buoy location. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.) Table 4 The values of the wave parameters measured and simulated without and with current at the buoy location. Case Ebb current (2003/11/06h15) Hs (m) Measured Without current With current 1.96 1.84 2.03 Tm02 (s) 7.90 6.61 7.61 Dir (deg.) 262 256 259 Ebb current (2003/12/04h01) Hs (m) 1.27 1.15 1.20 Tm02 (s) 5.45 4.54 5.90 Dir (deg.) 288 296 289 Flood current (2003/12/11h14) Hs (m) 1.14 1.17 1.14 Tm02 (s) 7.40 8.63 8.20 Dir (deg.) 281 276 278 Ebb current (2003/12/18h03) Hs (m) 2.34 1.97 2.31 Tm02 (s) 6.50 5.48 6.47 Dir (deg.) 247 243 249

the cases presented in Fig. 4. These changes lead implicitly to a modication of the wave parameters, as can be observed in Fig. 3 and Table 4. As expected, the opposite current produces an enhancement of the signicant wave height while for the case of almost following current a decrease of the signicant wave height occurs. It is observed that the model slightly underestimates the energy of the spectral peak, only in the case of 2003/12/04h01 the underestimation of the peak energy is greater. A possible explanation for this case could be the fact that in 4 of December some errors occurred in the estimation of both the wind direction and intensity. This produced higher differences between the parameters Tm02 and Dir measured and the results of the simulations (this aspect can be seen also in Fig. 3). The position of the peak frequency is generally well estimated. For the ebb tide situation the spectral shape modication is more signicant in a higher frequency range (after the spectral peak). As it can be noticed from Fig. 4, there is a quite good agreement between the measured spectra and those resulting from model simulations. Another aspect related to the wavecurrent interaction is the wave refraction by the horizontal current shear, the higher wave frequencies being most susceptible to current refraction (Jonsson,

1990; MacIver et al., 2006; Haus, 2007). Wolf and Prandle (1999) have shown that current refraction is the likely mechanism for different situations of wave incident direction relative to the tidal current and the tidal modulation of the wave direction enhances when the frequency increases (their Fig. 4). This effect can be observed better when the wind direction is constant and close to the optimum direction of 451 to the current for maximum refraction. For the case of the simulations, the same tendency occurs, that is the higher frequency waves are turning increasingly towards the current direction as the frequency increases (around the frequency of 0.5 Hz this phenomenon becomes more signicant). Unfortunately the measurements do not show clearly this observation because some limitations of the high frequency recording capability of the buoy existed. This phenomenon can be observed, more or less evident, in Fig. 4 that corresponds to the case 2003/12/04h01. Taking into account that the angle between wave and current directions, and also the wind direction, is a very important factor in the wavecurrent interactions, for a better perception of this phenomenon 1D and 2D spectrum for both situations were compared. Measured and simulated spectrum at the buoy position in 2003/12/19h18 (Fig. 5, right side) and also at the same time frame

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Fig. 5. Comparison between 1D wave spectra: (a) simulated without and with currents at the entrance to the estuary and (b) measured and simulated without and with currents at the buoy location.

Fig. 6. Mean wave direction, wind and current directions: (a) at the entrance to the estuary and (b) at the buoy location.

simulated spectrum with and without current at entrance to the estuary (Fig. 5, left side) were analysed and compared. The new position considered is marked with a red square in Fig. 1. The vectors corresponding to the mean wave direction, current and wind directions are also represented. For the point considered at the entrance of the estuary they are illustrated in Fig. 6a, while for the position corresponding to the buoy location in Fig. 6b. It can be observed that for both locations the wind has almost the same direction (about 1451) and similar intensities at 10 m above the water level (3.6 m/s at the entrance in the estuary and 4.7 m/s at the buoy). Those characteristics of the wind conditions were maintained almost constant for a longer time interval. In the rst case (a) the current direction is exactly opposite to the incoming waves (mean wave direction 2191 and current direction 371). Both images in Fig. 5 show that the higher frequency waves are turning increasingly towards the current direction as the frequency increases, but at the entrance of the estuary this effect is accentuated. Fig. 7 presents the 2D spectra resulting from model simulations, with and without currents, and illustrates clearly the fact that at the entrance of the estuary a considerable modication in the wave direction occurs due to the presence of currents. 4.3. Spatial analysis For a better evaluation of the inuence of the currents in various zones of the estuary, comparisons between the Hs and Tm02 elds, resulting from simulations with and without currents, are performed corresponding to the two moments that were considered more important, for ebb and ood situations, respectively.

For the two cases considered, peak ebb tide (2003/12/19h16) and the subsequent peak ood tide (2003/12/19h23) the signicant wave height scalar elds together with the wave and wind vectors are presented in Figs. 8 and 9 as they resulted from simulations made considering the current and tide elds. Optional commands for diffraction and triads were activated. In order to evaluate the variation of the signicant wave height due to the current inuence (decreases or increases of the signicant wave height), a Hs transformation index RHs was dened as the ratio of signicant wave height elds and was computed as RHs i, j Hs i, j=Hswtc i, j 5

where Hs is the signicant wave height resulting from simulations including tide and tidal current, while Hswtc is the signicant wave height without the tide and corresponding tidal current. Another wave parameter that has important variations due to the wavecurrent interactions is the mean period. The ratio of the mean wave period elds (the RTm02 transformation index) was computed as RTm02 i, j Tm02 i, j=Tmwtc i, j 6

where Tm02 is the mean wave period resulting from simulations including tide and tidal current, while Tmwtc is the mean wave period without the tide and corresponding tidal current. The analysis of the current inuence on the signicant wave height elds is illustrated in Fig. 10a for the peak ebb tide situation (2003/12/19h16) and in Fig. 10c for the next peak ood tide situation (2003/12/19h23). The maximum value of the current is marked in the gures with a red circle, and it has the values of 2.29 and 1.58 m/s. For the same time frames the analysis of the current

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Fig. 7. 2D wave spectra: simulated without currents at the entrance to the estuary (a) and at the buoy location (b); simulated with currents at the entrance to the estuary (c) and at the buoy location (d).

Fig. 8. Signicant wave height elds, wave vectors (black arrows) and wind vectors (white arrows) for the peak ebb tide situation from 2003/12/19h16.

Fig. 9. Signicant wave height elds, wave vectors (black arrows) and wind vectors (white arrows) for the peak ood tide situation from 2003/12/19h23.

inuence on the mean wave period elds is illustrated in Fig. 10b for the peak ebb tide situation (2003/12/19h16) and in Fig. 10d for the next peak ood tide situation (2003/12/19h23). As shown in Fig. 10a, the ebb currents generate considerably increases in the signicant wave height elds principally along the

central channel. In places, these increases exceed even 60%. Along the navigation channel, at the entrance in the Tagus estuary, the enhancements in the signicant wave height is around 20% and also in the south of the central part of the estuary which is characterised only by locally wind generated waves as reported by Rusu et al.

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Fig. 10. Variation of the wave parameters due to the presence of currents (current vectorswhite arrows): signicant wave height (a) and mean wave period elds (b) for the peak ebb tide situation from 2003/12/19h16; signicant wave height (c) and mean wave period elds (d) for the peak ood tide situation from 2003/12/19h23.

(2009). From Fig. 10b results that the ebb currents produce enhancements in Tm02 and that the geographical spaces where these enhancements take place are about the same as for Hs, but the percentage of the mean period enhancement is greater than in the case of Hs. Fig. 10c presents the Hs variation due to the ood currents, when decreases of about 20% can be encountered along the central channel and in the south of the central zone of the estuary. In the north of the central zone, close to the coastline, some enhancements in Hs occur, but these are mainly due to the variations in the water level and not due to the wavecurrent interactions. At the entrance in the Tagus estuary the decrease of the Hs is about 10%. On the contrary, in the areas located close to the upper and the lower corners, at the channel entrance, the ood current leads to waves enhancement, while the ebb current leads to a decrease of the waves. For the ood currents presented in Fig. 10d, Tm02 has also the same tendency as Hs, and this time it is a decrease. It can be noticed that the percentage of Hs enhancement or decrease, respectively at the entrance of the estuary, is almost equal with those from the south of the central zone. Nevertheless, for Tm02 the enhancement is more than twice in the south of the central zone than at the entrance of the estuary. This is due to the fact that at the entrance of the estuary the wave conditions consist in a combination of swell with locally generated wind sea, while in the central part only the wind sea waves are characteristic.

5. Concluding remarks The present work continues the modelling effort on the wave propagation in the Tagus estuary and concerning the wave current interactions in such complex coastal environment. First an analysis of some measurements at the entrance of the estuary was carried out and some effects that appear characteristic due to the action of currents on wave have been observed.

These effects are evident in the tidal modulation of the signicant wave height and mean wave period. Tests were carried out comparing the performance of SWAN with and without the inclusion of tide level and current elds. It was found that their inclusion improved the wave modelling mainly as regards the signicant wave height and mean wave period and also that the modulation effects due to tide and ambient ow are clearly observed in results. A better agreement between the model predictions and measurements was encountered when tide and tidal currents were accounted for. An important factor in improving the reliability of the results would be to increase the accuracy of the tide level and current elds because the present study used only some average values. In order to quantify the inuence of currents on the main wave parameters, two opposite situations were considered. They correspond to the peak ebb tide encountered in 2003/12/19h16 and to the subsequent peak ood tide situation from 2003/12/19h23, respectively. It was observed that the most affected areas are the central channel and the entrance in the estuary, places where the tide induced currents are usually stronger. Nevertheless, in the south of the central zone, close to Lisbon, although the current intensity is lower, because only locally wind generated waves are characteristics, the effect of currents on waves is also considerable. Finally, it has also to be noticed the fact that further validations are necessary to conrm the results of the model simulations inside the estuary. Additional measurements are also necessary to conrm the fact that the higher frequency waves are turning increasingly towards the current direction as the frequency increases.

Acknowledgements ~o The rst and second authors have been funded by Fundac -a para a Ci encia e Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science

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and Technology) under post-doctoral grants SFRH/BPD/65553/ 2009 and SFRH/BPD/41063/2007 respectively. The work presented is a contribution to the project: NEARPORT (Development of a real-time nearshore wave prediction system for the Portuguese ports) supported by grant PTDC/ECM/ 64373/2006 from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. The authors are indebted to the Administration of the Port of Lisbon for having supplied the wave data for the validations reported here. References
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