Nonparametric estimation of circular trend surfaces with application to wave directions

In oceanography, modeling wave fields requires the use of statistical tools capable of handling the circular nature of the data measurements. An important issue in ocean wave analysis is the study of height and direction waves, being direction values recorded as angles or, equivalently, as points on a unit circle. Hence, reconstruction of a wave direction field on the sea surface can be approached by the use of a linear–circular regression model, viewing wave directions as a realization of a circular spatial process whose trend should be estimated. In this paper, we consider a spatial regression model with a circular response and several real-valued predictors. Nonparametric estimators of the circular trend surface are proposed, accounting for the (unknown) spatial correlation. Some asymptotic results about these estimators as well as some guidelines for their practical implementation are also given. The performance of the proposed estimators is investigated in a simulation study. An application to wave directions in the Adriatic Sea is provided for illustration.