The Bureau of Meteorology is Australia’s national agency responsible for warning mariners, industry and the community of dangerous or damaging waves affecting people and structures along the Australian coastline and high seas.  The Bureau’s marine and high seas warning services to the community rely on wave modelling capabilities. 

The Australian wave model (AUSWAVE), based on the third-generation wind wave modelling framework WAVEWATCH III® (WW3) model has been the operational sea-state model run by the Bureau National Operations Centre since August 2010. The AUSWAVE system is forced by the surface winds from the Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator (ACCESS) Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) system.  Over the past nine years, there were three major upgrades to the operational wave models.

This presentation covers the most recent changes to the operational wave model configurations which include an introduction of "Australian Parallel Suite 3" (APS3) ACCESS-G surface winds, and an increase of the global wave model spatial resolution from 0.25 degree to 0.1 degree, to match improvements in the resolution of the atmospheric forcing and decommissioning the regional wave model. The performance of the new global wave forecast system will be assessed against the satellite altimetry data from Radar Altimeter Database (RADS) and in-situ wave rider buoys along the Australian coasts.