This review focuses on recent advances in process-based numerical models of the impact of extreme storms on sandy coasts. Driven by larger-scale models of meteorology and hydrodynamics, these models simulate morphodynamics across the Sallenger storm-impact scale, including swash, collision, overwash, and inundation. Models are becoming both wider (as more processes are added) and deeper (as detailed physics replaces earlier parameterizations). Algorithms for wave-induced flows and sediment transport under shoaling waves are among the recent developments. Community and open-source models have become the norm. Observations of initial conditions (topography, land cover, and sediment characteristics) have become more detailed, and improvements in tropical cyclone and wave models provide forcing (winds, waves, surge, and upland flow) that is better resolved and more accurate, yielding commensurate improvements in model skill. We foresee that future storm-impact models will increasingly resolve individual waves, apply data assimilation, and be used in ensemble modeling modes to predict uncertainties. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Marine Science, Volume 14 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Predicting hydrodynamic evolution and the underlying morphodynamics shoreward of the wave shoaling zone is an ongoing challenge in coastal oceanography. Considerable effort has been made using regional-scale modeling tools to predict the hydrodynamics and the beach response to high energy storm events as well as beach recovery under low energy waves (Hegermiller et al., 2022;Rafati et al., 2021;Van der Lugt et al., 2019). These modeling frameworks, formulated as short-wave-averaged models, are not designed to simulate wave-by-wave hydrodynamic and sediment transport processes. Hence, key processes of intra-wave-driven sediment transport are not resolved, and the sediment transport modeling relies on empirical formulations parameterized by bulk wave characteristics (
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.