Compound effects of rain, storm surge, and river discharge on coastal flooding during Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee (2011) in the Mid-Atlantic region: coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean model simulation and observations

Kerns, Brandon W.; Chen, Shuyi S.

doi:10.1007/s11069-022-05694-0

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…The high discharge of Lee is absent from MOSART (Figure 4a) and Experiment 2 exhibits a muted version of the associated increase in hypoxic volume during Lee (Figure 4b). The qualitatively different impact on hypoxia of the two tropical cyclones (decreased hypoxia during Irene, increased hypoxia during Lee) can be linked to the characteristics of the storms (see, e.g., Kerns & Chen, 2023).…”

Section: Sensitivity Of Model Results To Terrestrial Freshwater Disch...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The qualitatively different impact on hypoxia of the two tropical cyclones (decreased hypoxia during Irene, increased hypoxia during Lee) can be linked to the characteristics of the storms (see, e.g., Kerns & Chen, 2023). In the case of Irene, the bulk of the precipitation falls south of the Bay's watershed, east of the Bay's watershed, or over the Bay itself (Figure 6a), which limits the storm's overall impact on terrestrial inputs of freshwater, nutrients and organic matter.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the Sensitivity of Coastal Hypoxia to Its External Physical Forcings

St‐Laurent,

Friedrichs

2024

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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The development of low‐oxygen zones threatening marine life (hypoxia) occurs annually in multiple coastal regions of the world. The largest estuary of the continental United States, the Chesapeake Bay, typically has ≈10 km3 of water with dioxygen concentrations <3 mg L−1 in July. As numerical methods for refining model resolutions in targeted areas are becoming common, there is interest in assessing the feasibility of simulating coastal hazards such as hypoxia in Earth System Models (ESMs). These coupled models are typically not constrained by observations and thus likely to feature systematic biases in their land, atmosphere, or ocean components. This study relies on four numerical experiments to evaluate the sensitivity of Chesapeake Bay hypoxia to changes or biases in its external physical forcings. Hypoxia exhibits only a minor decrease (−1.6%) after reducing the Bay's terrestrial freshwater discharge by 9.5% (but keeping terrestrial nutrient loadings the same). Changes in freshwater discharges have their largest impact on hypoxia during one extreme event (−37% during 2011 tropical storm Lee). Similarly, changing oceanic conditions on the shelf or their temporal frequency impact hypoxia by only 5%–6%, indicating that the latter is predominantly dictated by local conditions. Although these results are promising from the perspective of ESMs, additional components of ESMs will need to be evaluated before general conclusions can be reached. We notably speculate that the Bay's hypoxia would exhibit higher sensitivity to other forcings not examined here, notably air temperatures and nutrient loadings.

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Section: Sensitivity Of Model Results To Terrestrial Freshwater Disch...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Sensitivity of Coastal Hypoxia to Its External Physical Forcings

St‐Laurent,

Friedrichs

2024

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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“…Additionally, the low-lying area of DRB experienced severe CF due to the combined effects of storm surge and high river discharge. The adverse consequence of Hurricane Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems 10.1029/2023MS004054 Irene thus highlights the vulnerability of the Mid-Atlantic region to TCs, particularly TC-induced CF (Kerns & Chen, 2023;Xiao et al, 2021;Ye et al, 2020).…”

Section: Study Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation of Compound Flooding Using River‐Ocean Two‐Way Coupled E3SM Ensemble on Variable‐Resolution Meshes

Feng,

Tan,

Engwirda

et al. 2024

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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Coastal zone compound flooding (CF) can be caused by the interactive fluvial and oceanic processes, particularly when coastal backwater propagates upstream and interacts with high river discharge. The modeling of CF is limited in existing Earth System Models (ESMs) due to coarse mesh resolutions and one‐way coupled river‐ocean components. In this study, we present a novel multi‐scale coupling framework within the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM), integrating global atmosphere and land with interactively coupled river and ocean models using different meshes with refined resolutions near the coastline. To evaluate this framework, we conducted ensemble simulations of a CF event (Hurricane Irene in 2011) in a Mid‐Atlantic estuary. The results demonstrate that the novel E3SM configuration can reasonably reproduce river discharge and sea surface height variations. The two‐way river‐ocean coupling improves the representation of coastal backwater effects at the terrestrial‐aquatic interface that are caused by the combined actions of tide and storm surge during the CF event, thus providing a valuable modeling tool for better understanding the river‐estuary‐ocean dynamics in extreme events under climate change. Notably, our results show that the most significant CF impacts occur when the highest storm surge generated by a tropical cyclone meets with a moderate river discharge. This study highlights the state‐of‐the‐art advancements developed within E3SM for simulating multi‐scale coastal processes.

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“…Currently, GeoClaw is not able to integrate dynamical astronomical tides at the open ocean boundaries, or discharge at the inland upstream boundaries of rivers. Further, GeoClaw allows to model only one TC at a time, and cannot account for the influence of sequential TCs48 or interactions with monsoon rainfall…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting for surge dynamics is key to modeling tropical cyclone-induced coastal flooding

Vogt,

Treu,

Mengel

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Tropical cyclone-induced storm surge is a major coastal risk which will be further amplified by rising sea levels under global warming. The surge-induced floodplains are commonly modeled using a two-step approach by first producing coastal water levels which are, secondly, translated into inundated areas. Here, we evaluate an alternative approach where ocean dynamics and coastal inundation are modeled in a single step using the open-source solver GeoClaw that accounts for the event-specific variation over time of flood drivers. We compute the surge-induced flood extents for a global set of 71 storms from 2000-2019. We show that GeoClaw better reproduces satellite observations and high water marks than two different common modeling approaches that lack a process-based representation of inundation dynamics: a state-of-the-art two-step approach combining a full-scale ocean dynamics with a static (bathtub-type) inundation model and a lightweight approach that directly translates parametric tropical cyclone wind fields into inundation maps using statistical relationships. GeoClaw does not reach the performance of the ocean dynamics model in reproducing coastal water levels, but this deficiency is overcompensated by the dynamic modeling of inundated areas. The computational efficiency of the one-step approach opens up new perspectives for global assessments of coastal risks from tropical cyclones.

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Compound effects of rain, storm surge, and river discharge on coastal flooding during Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee (2011) in the Mid-Atlantic region: coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean model simulation and observations

Cited by 5 publications

References 52 publications

On the Sensitivity of Coastal Hypoxia to Its External Physical Forcings

On the Sensitivity of Coastal Hypoxia to Its External Physical Forcings

Simulation of Compound Flooding Using River‐Ocean Two‐Way Coupled E3SM Ensemble on Variable‐Resolution Meshes

Accounting for surge dynamics is key to modeling tropical cyclone-induced coastal flooding

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