Statistics of Extreme and Freak Waves

Wind waves are of the main hazards, affecting the human activity and needed for shipbuilding design, near shore facilities, planning and management of coastal and port operation, etc. Wave climate investigations, based on continuous 30-year hindcasting are performed. One of the main results of hindcasting is a set of two-dimensional spectra S(ω,θ) on selected grids and synoptic terms t, in particularly. For statistical generalization as the tools, multivariate statistical analysis is used. Special attention is drawn to point and field extremes. Specific and difference between these two statistics is crucial for solution of some applied problems. Adjusted approaches do not allow investigating phenomena known as freak (or rogue) waves. The main difference between extreme and freak waves is in their unusual form. Probability of freak wave depends from a lot of internal and external reasons. Some approaches are proposed and described in this paper.