Assessing storm surge hazard and impact of sea level rise in the Lesser Antilles case study of Martinique

Abstract

Abstract. In the Lesser Antilles, coastal inundations from hurricane-induced storm surges pose a great threat to lives, properties and ecosystems. Assessing current and future storm surge hazards with sufficient spatial resolution is of primary interest to help coastal planners and decision makers develop mitigation and adaptation measures. Here, we use wave-current numerical models and statistical methods to investigate worst case scenarios and 100-year surge levels for the case study of Martinique under present climate or considering a potential sea level rise. Results confirm that the wave setup plays a major role in the Lesser Antilles, where the narrow island shelf impedes the piling-up of large amounts of wind-driven water on the shoreline during extreme events. The radiation stress gradients thus contribute significantly to the total surge -up to 100 % in some cases. The nonlinear interactions of sea level rise (SLR) with bathymetry and topography are generally found to be relatively small in Martinique but can reach several tens of centimeters in low-lying areas where the inundation extent is strongly enhanced compared to present conditions. These findings further emphasize the importance of waves for developing operational storm surge warning systems in the Lesser Antilles and encourage caution when using static methods to assess the impact of sea level rise on storm surge hazard.

Characteristics of Coastline Changes on Southeast Asia Islands from 2000 to 2015

“…To date, most research has focused only on a few islands and atolls to study the temporal and spatial characteristics and drivers of island coastline changes based on natural and human activities, such as island morphology and geomorphology, cyclical tides, tropical cyclones, sediment transport, ecosystem driving, dam interception and commercial sand mining [14,[17][18][19]. Furthermore, under the circumstances of global warming and rising sea level, many studies have focused on sea level rise and island coastline changes.…”

Hazard Assessment of Typhoon-Driven Storm Waves in the Nearshore Waters of Taiwan

“…It has been found to give good performances for hindcasting the hydrodynamics and sea states around islands [7,8]. For the purpose of accurately hindcasting typhoon-driven SWHs, two validation tests were conducted using three kinds of wind fields.…”

“…Similar to the storm surge hazard assessment conducted by the authors of [7][8][9] in the Caribbean and Yellow Sea, here, the goal of storm wave hazard assessment is to evaluate and better understand the natural attributes of storm waves (e.g., how high a storm wave is) in the nearshore waters of Taiwan.…”

“…Many studies have focused on an analysis of storm surge hazards [7][8][9], but the potential impact of storm waves has received little attention. Shih et al [23] reproduced waves induced by the highest intensity and lowest intensity typhoons selected from 1977 to 2016, and analyzed the possible wave threats along the coast of Taiwan.…”

Assessing the Potential Highest Storm Tide Hazard in Taiwan Based on 40-Year Historical Typhoon Surge Hindcasting

“…Torrential rains can affect mountain areas during the passage of a typhoon and increase river flows and stages, and river outflows in an estuary can be blocked by high incoming astronomical tides and storm surges and consequently create floods in the surrounding areas of the cities close to a delta river, although typhoon-driven storm surges are not extremely high in Taiwan. Many unstructured-grid, tide-surge-wave coupled models, e.g., FVCOM-SWAVE (Finite Volume Community Ocean Model and unstructured-grid Surface WAVE model) [7], SELFE-WWM-II (Semi-implicit Eulerian-Lagrangian Finite Element model and Wind Wave Model-II) [8] and SWAN+ADCIRC (Simulating WAves Nearshore model and ADvanced CIRCulation model) [9], have been successfully applied to predict and hindcast typhoon-generated coastal storm surges, and assess the storm surge hazard for the small islands [10,11]. Chen et al [12] studied the contribution of nonlinear interactions to storm tide simulations in the southern coast of Taiwan for Super Typhoon Meranti in 2016.…”