Office of Coast Survey
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
U.S. Department of Commerce
Office of Coast Survey
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
U.S. Department of Commerce
The unstructured-mesh ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) model has a wide application both in research and as an operational tide and surge model. Similarly, WAVEWATCH III (WW3) is a major ocean wave modeling system that is widely applied in both operational and research arenas. Creating a coupled system among these models using a community-based coupling infrastructure is therefore a valuable contribution to a wide range of applications. We have developed a fully coupled storm surge and wave models using the National Unified Operational Prediction Capability (NUOPC) framework. The coupled system was evaluated for laboratory test case and Hurricane Ike, Isabel, Andrew and Sandy for the whole U.S. Atlantic coasts.
Fig. 1: Design of the coupled application for coastal flooding inundation studies (All model configurations and results are pre-decisional and for official use only).
To validate the surge-wave coupled system, we compared the coupled system results against the laboratory flume experiment of Boer, 1994. This experiment was carried out at Delft University of Technology in the spring 1993 to investigate the interaction between wind waves and the mean circulation via wave dissipation and radiation stress transfer.
Fig. 2: Significant wave height (a, c, e) and wave setup (b, d, f) for three different wave conditions (All model configurations and results are pre-decisional and for official use only).
The importance of dynamical coupling of surge and surface waves on the spatial extent of the inundation and active wave action area were investigated for Hurricane Ike, 2008.
The map of the maximum surge level during the whole simulation for the fully coupled case is shown here (see below figure). The maximum surge level is calculated by subtracting tidal water level from fully coupled results. The results reveal that the most severe inundation during Ike, 2008 with more than 6 m above the maximum tide level was took place on the east side of the hurricane track in the region between the Galveston Bay, Tx and the Sabine Lake, Tx.
Fig. 3a: Total surge level computed by subtracting the tide only runs from a fully coupled case which includes both atmospheric and wave coupling contributions
Fig. 3b: The maximum wave contribution in total water level computed by subtracting stand alone case from fully coupled
Fig. 3: Red line represents Hurricane Ike's best track. Black contour line represents the shoreline, and the areas beyond the black contour line are the inundated regions (All model configurations and results are pre-decisional and for official use only).
This work is an ongoing effort supported through COASTAL Act Program , NOAA Water Initiative and other NOAA wide projects. The storm surge and wave models coupled application is being developed as a collaborative effort among Office of Coast Survey of NOAA National Ocean Service (NOS) , Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) of NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) and Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) developers. We are also working towards extending this framework to include NOAA National Water Model (NWM) , the inland hydrology model of NOAA Office of Water Prediction (OWP), in a close collaboration with OWP scientists.
Contact: Saeed.Moghimi@noaa.gov
Disclaimer: All model configurations and results are pre-decisional and for official use only.
Coastal Ocean Models