Extreme Ocean Storm Statistics for Eastern and Southern Australia with Clustering Analysis

Australian coastal storm data from a 30-year timeseries of observations, focusing on the central coast of New South Wales. The dataset includes multivariate statistics for extreme storm events, such as significant wave height, wave period, direction, duration, and storm surge, extracted using a peaks-over-threshold method. Analysis was conducted by the Australian Ocean Data Network as part of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC Project.

Use Cases

• Modeling coastal erosion risk based on clustered storm event frequency and intensity.
• Statistical forecasting of extreme wave heights and storm surge using fitted Generalised Pareto and Pearson type 3 distributions.
• Analyzing temporal dependencies between storm events to understand anti-clustering patterns.
• Assessing joint probability of storm variables using Copula functions for dependency structure.

Strengths

• Based on a 30-year timeseries of ocean observations.
• Storm events are defined and checked for statistical independence using sea-level pressure data.
• Multivariate analysis includes key storm statistics: wave height, period, direction, duration, and surge.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to data_gov_au, focusing on eastern and southern Australian coasts.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Independent storm events extracted from observational timeseries using a peaks-over-threshold approach, then manually checked against meteorological data.

Time Range

30-year timeseries (specific years not provided).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-10 17:05:38.685678; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Eastern and southern coast of Australia, with a study site on the central coast of New South Wales.