Long-Term Analysis of the Black Sea Weather Windows

A particular aspect of the maritime operations involves available weather intervals, especially in the context of the emerging renewable energy projects. The Black Sea basin is considered for assessment in this work, by analyzing a total of 30-years (1987-2016) of high-resolution wind and wave data. Furthermore, using as reference, the operations thresholds of some installation vessels, some relevant case studies have been identified. The evaluation was made over the entire sea basin, but also for some specific sites located close to the major harbors. In general, the significant wave heights with values above 2.5 m present a maximum restriction of 6%, while for the western sector, a percentage value of 40% is associated to a significant wave height of 1 m. There are situations in which the persistence of a restriction reaches a maximum time interval of 96-h; this being the case of the sites Constanta, Sulina, Istanbul or Burgas. From a long-term perspective, it seems that there is a tendency of the waves to increase close to the Romanian, Bulgarian, and Turkish coastal environments-while an opposite trend is expected for the sites located on the eastern side.