ASSESSMENT OF SEASONAL VARIABILITY FOR WIND SPEED AND SIGNIFICANT WAVE HEIGHT USING SATELLITE ALTIMETER OVER MALAYSIAN SEAS

Abstract. Malaysia is located in the equatorial region and experienced climate hot, humid and rainy throughout the year. These have brought four monsoon seasons to Malaysia which can be categorised as Northeast monsoon, Southwest monsoon, First-inter monsoon and Second-inter monsoon. Although Malaysia is surrounded by large scale marine resources, the lack of understanding in seasonal variability has affected the spatial and temporal analysis. Thus, this study will highlight the assessment of seasonal variability of wind speed and significant wave height over the Malaysian seas. For more than two decades satellite altimeter data were used to generate a prolonged trend of regional ocean wind speed and significant wave height in order to study the monsoons in Malaysia. A set of wind speed and significant wave height data are compared with the in-situ measurement to validate the accuracy of the wind speed and significant wave height observation using the satellite altimeter. Two selected buoys were using as benchmarks and assessed using the statistical analysis by conducting a root mean square error and a correlation calculation. Seasonal variations assessment is conducted with significance to analyse the monsoon effect towards the wind speed and significant wave height condition. As a result, both ocean parameters present a good value of root mean square error and positive correlation which were 0.7976 (wind speed) and 0.92 (significant wave height), which proves the measurement from satellite altimeter is reliable to use. In addition, the seasonal variation assessment illustrates during the Northeast monsoon, each part of the Malaysian seas experienced with great wind speed and significant wave height.