The impact of removing the high-frequency spectral tail on rogue wave statistics

When making directional surface gravity waves in a wave tank or when initialising numerical simulations of the ocean, the wave spectrum is often curtailed suppressing higher frequencies and wavenumbers. We consider the impact of doing this by numerically simulating two seminal experiments, those of Onorato et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 627, 2009, pp. 235–257, R2) and Latheef & Swan (Proc. R. Soc. A, vol. 469, no. 2152, 2013, p. 20120696). We simulate waves using a fully nonlinear potential-flow model. We find that curtailing the spectrum can have a significant impact on the subsequent evolution. In particular, for cases where the spectrum has been curtailed, the nonlinear physics produces significantly more extreme or rogue waves than are observed in the case where the full spectral tail was included in the initial conditions, and this difference persists over tens of periods after the waves are initialised. This suggests that sea states that are ‘out of equilibrium’ (i.e. with their tails removed) can produce a greater number of rogue waves. We show this can also have an impact on predicted loads on offshore infrastructure.