Hurricanes play an outsized role in our nation’s coastal and inland flood hazards. Understanding historic storm conditions and their resulting impacts is paramount to building our nation’s resilience to future extreme events. This project will develop improved methods for simulating historical hurricanes that will result in enhanced data on storm-driven waves, water levels, and coastal flooding.
Why We Care
Very few measurements exist for wind waves, water levels, and inundation depths for tropical cyclones (TCs), of which the most intense form is a hurricane. Recent studies have sought to create more storm impact data by using computer models of storm surge and waves. However, these models are applied using atmospheric forcing data, such as wind and pressure, that often have a coarse resolution relative to the spatial scales of small TCs. As a result, the model datasets sometimes underestimate the extreme values of these variables.
What We Are Doing
This project will develop improved methods for estimating historical TC winds and pressure (“met forcing”) that will result in improved simulation of storm-driven waves, water levels, and coastal flooding. The project’s primary objectives are to: (1) develop a multi-decadal storm set and finalize improved met forcing methods, (2) apply three methods for met forcing to simulate storm tides and wind waves, and (3) assess accuracy and bias to identify the best method.
Benefits of Our Work
Project deliverables will include a parametric TC met forcing toolbox. The improved methodology will support research on coastal hazards at subseasonal to decadal time frames, enabling improved historical TC hazard simulations that will continue to advance NOAA products and services.
The project is led by Dr. Philip Orton of the Stevens Institute of Technology and includes co-investigators Dr. Richard Luettich at the University of North Carolina, and Drs. Reza Marsooli and Marouane Temimi at the Stevens Institute of Technology. The project is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH).