Global Wave Heatmap

One of the main criteria in our location study is the worst-case wave height. Oceanography student Martin emailed us the KNMI Wave Atlas, which is a global heatmap of wave & wind data, trends, and variability, based on data from 1957 – 2006, at 1.5×1.5 degree resolution. While the resolution is smaller than we’d like, it’s a great start at the type of data we need to find the best seastead locations, and we may be able to reproduce their methodology at higher resolution on our target regions. Here’s the most important graph, the 100-year significant wave height heatmap:

In terms of the places we’d already been thinking about for other reasons (multiple jurisdictions, close to first world countries for customers, etc.) the southern Caribbean looks quite good (purple, 3.5-6.5m), and it looks like the western edge of the Med is pretty good (blue, 6.5-9.5m), although the rest of the Med is worse (green, 12.5-15.5) as are the seamounts west of Portugal. Food for thought for sure! Note that this does not take into account seasonal migration strategies, and that the data has some known bugs, like not accurately reflecting tropical cyclones.