On the adequacy of second-order models to predict abnormal waves

The paper is intended to extend the investigations about the nature of abnormal waves that have been reported in the work of Guedes Soares et al(.) (Characteristics of abnormal waves in North Sea states. Applied Ocean Research 25, [337-344]). The same dataset gathered at the oil platform North Alwyn in the North Sea during the November storm in 1997 is used along with the time series from the Draupner platform, in which an abnormal wave occurred. The data are reanalyzed from the viewpoint of the applicability of second-order models to fit large waves. The observed results confirm that the second-order approximation is not adequate to describe highly asymmetric and abnormal waves. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.