Evaluation of the Worldwide Wave Energy Distribution Based on ERA5 Data and Altimeter Measurements

There is an increasing necessity in reducing CO2 emissions and implementing clean energy technologies, and over the years the marine environment has shown a huge potential in terms of renewable energy. From this perspective, extracting marine renewable energy represents one of the most important technological challenges of the 21st century. In this context, the objective of the present work is to provide a new and comprehensive understanding concerning the global wave energy resources based on the most recent results coming from two different databases, ERA5 and the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative for Sea State. In this study, an analysis was first made based only on the ERA5 data and concerns the 30-year period of 1989-2018. The mean wave power, defined as the energy flux per unit of wave-crest length, was evaluated at this step. Besides the spatial distribution of this parameter, its seasonal, inter, and mean annual variability was also assessed on a global scale. As a second step, the mean wave energy density per unit horizontal area was analyzed for a 27-year period (1992-2018) with both ERA5 and the satellite data from the European Space Agency being considered. The comparison indicates a relatively good concordance between the results provided by the two databases in terms of mean wave energy density, although the satellite data indicate slightly higher energy values.