Do the swells from the Arabian Sea intrude into the Arabian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz?

This study derives the long-term climatology of significant wave heights and mean wave periods of swells, wind seas and resultant waves in a domain covering the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz (SoH), Sea of Oman and northern Arabian Sea using ERA5 data for the period 1959–2022. The analysis reveals distinct spatial and seasonal variability in wind sea, swell and resultant wave parameters. The annual mean and seasonal mean wave heights show dominance of wind seas over the swells in the northern and central Gulf, while the swells have been dominated in the southern Gulf, SoH, Sea of Oman and northern Arabian Sea. Typical cases of waves associated with shamal and non-shamal periods have been examined through spatial representation of significant wave heights and direction and point representation of wave spectra at select locations in the study domain. The study explores the possibility of intrusion of swells from the Arabian Sea and Sea of Oman into the Gulf through the SoH. We find that swells from the Arabian Sea/Sea of Oman are intruding in to the Gulf, specifically to the southern Gulf, during non-shamal periods of winter and summer, with relatively high impact during winter.