Barrier islands characterize up to an eighth of the global coastlines. They buffer the mainland coastal areas from storm surge and wave energy from the open ocean. Changes in their shape or disappearance due to erosion may lead to an increased impact of sea level extremes on the mainland. A barrier island threatened by erosion is Egmont Key which is located in the mouth of the Tampa Bay estuary at the west-central coast of Florida. In this sensitivity study we investigate the impact a loss of Egmont Key would have on storm surge water levels and wind waves along the coastline of Tampa Bay. We first simulate still water levels in a control run over the years 1948-2010 using present-day bathymetry and then in a scenario run covering the same period with identical boundary conditions but with Egmont Key removed from the bathymetry. Return water levels are assessed for the control and the scenario runs using the Peak-over-threshold method along the entire Tampa Bay coastline. Egmont Key is found to have a significant influence on the return water levels in the Bay, especially in the northern, furthest inland parts where water levels associated with the 100-year return period increase between 5 and 15 cm. Additionally, wind wave simulations considering all 99.5th percentile threshold exceedances in the years 1980-2013 were conducted with the same control and scenario bathymetries. Assessing changes in return levels of significant wave heights due to the loss of Egmont Key revealed an increase of significant wave heights around today's location of the island.
Westerly and north-westerly storms regularly hit the German North Sea coast causing surges of several meters at the dikes. But extreme events like cyclone Xaver in 2013 are not the largest physically possible events on record. Dangendorf et al. (2016) show that the individual components of the total water level (i.e. mean sea level, surge, and tide) were not at their observed maximum during Xaver. The research project “EXTREMENESS†was initiated to examine the meteorological potential of storms in the German Bight and to assess the consequences of extremely large and rare but physically possible storm surge events, so called “black swansâ€. Our project partners, the German Meteorological Office, the German Federal Waterways Engineering and Research Institute, and Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, evaluate possible meteorological and resulting hydraulic boundary conditions including regionally projected sea level rise scenarios which we use to simulate inundations in the study area around Emden (Lower Saxony, Germany) using a two-dimensional hydrodynamic numerical (2D-HN) model. Large parts of the region are situated below mean sea level and drained using tide gates and pumping stations. Therefore the area is highly vulnerable to dike failures and loads exceeding the design levels of defense structures. Combining inundation scenarios with exceeding probabilities and dike failure probabilities will yield risk maps, showing the most vulnerable dike sections and pointing out areas that need particular attention in maintenance.
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.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.