Abstract
Coastal flooding from landfalling tropical cyclones (TCs) is a major hazard with increasing severity in a warming climate and rising seas. It is difficult to predict because of highly complex compound effects of TC induced heavy rainfall, storm surge, and river discharge. This can be further exacerbated by sequential TCs such as Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee in late August to mid-September 2011, which caused major coastal flooding in the Mid-Atlantic region. This study focuses on better understanding and improving prediction of the compound effects of rain, storm surge, and river discharge using a high-resolution coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean model, namely the Unified Wave INterface–Coupled Model (UWIN-CM) and observations from NDBC buoys, NOAA tide gauges, and USGS estuary sites. UWIN-CM effectively captured the storm track and intensity, surface winds, surface waves, and ocean surface evolution associated with the two storms, compared with the observations. Compound effects of wind, rain, storm surge, and river-stream discharge on coastal flooding are investigated. The storm surge from Hurricane Irene was observed along the coasts Maryland, New Jersey, and New York, Delaware Bay, the lower reaches of the Delaware River, and in lower Chesapeake Bay. Strong onshore wind pushes water upstream, which has the highest compound effects on coastal flooding. Heavy rain and river-stream discharge into the coastal zone contributes mainly to locations upstream away from the open bay water. A new, indirect machine learning method of estimating the spatial extent of coastal flooding using simulated coastal sea surface height is shown.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the MultiSector Dynamics, Earth System Model Development and Regional and Global Modeling and Analysis program areas of the Biological and Environmental Research program as part of the multi-program, collaborative Integrated Coastal Modeling (ICoM) project (under the PNNL/UW PO516639). We thank the ICoM model intercomparison team for inspiring and informative discussions during this study.
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Both authors contributed to the study conception and design. Funding for this study was acquired by SC. Grant management and project supervision were performed by SC. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by BK. The first draft of the manuscript was written by BK, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Kerns, B.W., Chen, S.S. 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. Nat Hazards 116, 693–726 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-022-05694-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-022-05694-0