Numerical simulations of the storm tide that flooded the US Atlantic coastline during Hurricane Sandy (2012) are carried out using the National Weather Service (NWS) Sea Lakes and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) storm surge prediction model to quantify its ability to replicate the height, timing, evolution and extent of the water that was driven ashore by this large, destructive storm. Recent upgrades to the numerical model, including the incorporation of astronomical tides, are described and simulations with and without these upgrades are contrasted to assess their contributions to the increase in forecast accuracy. It is shown, through comprehensive verifications of SLOSH simulation results against peak water surface elevations measured at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tide gauge stations, by storm surge sensors deployed and hundreds of high water marks collected by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), that the SLOSH-simulated water levels at 71% (89%) of the data measurement locations have less than 20% (30%) relative error. The RMS error between observed and modeled peak water levels is 0.47 m. In addition, the model's extreme computational efficiency enables it to OPEN ACCESS J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2014, 2 438 run large, automated ensembles of predictions in real-time to account for the high variability that can occur in tropical cyclone forecasts, thus furnishing a range of values for the predicted storm surge and inundation threat.
The operational forecast demands and constraints of the National Hurricane Center require that a storm surge model in research mode be tested against a benchmark model such as Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) for accuracy, computation time, and numerical stability before the model is used for operational forecasts. Additionally, the simulated results must be in a geographic information system format to facilitate the usage of computed storm surge for various applications. This paper presents results from a demonstration project to explore the pathway for the transition of the Coastal and Estuarine Storm Tide (CEST) model to an operational forecast model by testing CEST over SLOSH basins in Florida. The performance and stability of CEST were examined by conducting simulations for Hurricane Andrew (1992) and more than 100 000 synthetic hurricanes for nine SLOSH basins covering the Florida coast and Lake Okeechobee. The results show that CEST produces peak surge heights similar to those from SLOSH. Additionally, CEST has proven to be numerically stable against all synthetic hurricanes and the computation time of CEST is comparable to that of SLOSH. Therefore, CEST has the potential to be used for operational forecasts of storm surge. The potential of producing more detailed real-time surge inundation forecasts was also investigated through the simulations of Andrew's surge on various grids with different cell sizes. The results indicate that CEST can produce 48-h forecasts using a single processor in about 40 min over a grid generated by reducing the cell edge size of the SLOSH grid by 4 times.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.