BENEFITS AND LIMITATIONS OF A COUPLED WAVE-SURGE MODEL FOR AUSTRALIAN EXTREMES

Extreme sea levels result from a combination of a range of factors that include long term mean sea level variability, astronomical tides, storm surges due to atmospheric pressure and wind, wave breaking, and other regional dynamics. Numerical circulation/storm-surge models are frequently used to predict water levels over broad areas with the outputs used for planning or emergency management applications. Recently, coupled wave-circulation models have been shown to improve extreme sea level predictions through the inclusion of wave setup that results from the transfer of momentum of breaking waves into sea level at the shoreline. Other studies have shown that the representations of surface wind drag can be improved when the sea state is considered, and this can directly influence the amplitude of storm surges at the coast. However, most coupled wave-circulation model studies have been undertaken for relatively small computational domains and for a limited range of coastal morphologies and storm types. In this paper we assess the benefits and limitations of using a coupled wave-circulation model to predict extreme sea levels and determine wave effects for a broad range of coastal morphologies and extreme storm events all around Australia. Simulated events occurred in three oceans and considered tropical cyclones, a cyclone undergoing extratropical transition, and a large mid-latitude extratropical low-pressure system.Recorded Presentation from the vICCE (YouTube Link): https://youtu.be/UfyWHI4OHBA

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Supporting European coastal sectors to adapt to changes in extreme sea levels with climate change

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-19471 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sanne Muis ◽

Maialen Irazoqui Apecechea ◽

Job Dullaart ◽

Joao de Lima Rego ◽

Kristine S. Madsen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Sea Level ◽

Storm Surges ◽

Climate Impact ◽

Climate Impacts ◽

Water Levels ◽

Climate Data ◽

Local Climate ◽

Sea Levels ◽

Extreme Sea Levels

Climate change will lead to increases in the flood risk in low-lying coastal areas. Understanding the magnitude and impact of such changes is vital to design adaptive strategies and create awareness. In&#160; the&#160; context&#160; of&#160; the&#160; CoDEC&#160; project&#160; (Coastal&#160; Dataset&#160; for&#160; Evaluation&#160; of&#160; Climate&#160; impact),&#160; we&#160; developed a consistent European dataset of extreme sea levels, including climatic changes from 1979 to 2100. To simulate extreme sea levels, we apply the Global Tide and Surge Model v3.0 (GTSMv3.0), a 2D hydrodynamic model with global coverage. GTSM has a coastal resolution of 2.5 km globally and 1.25 km in Europe, and incorporates dynamic interactions between sea-level&#160; rise,&#160; tides&#160; and&#160; storm surges. Validation of the dataset shows a good performance with a mean bias of 0-.04 m for the 1 in 10-year water levels. When analyzing changes in extreme sea levels for the future climate scenarios, it is projected that by the end of the century the 1 in 10-year water levels are likely to increase up to 0.5 m. This change is largely driven by the increase in mean sea levels, although locally changes in storms surge and interaction with tides can amplify the impacts of sea-level rise with changes up to 0.2 m in the 1 in 10-year water level.The CoDEC dataset will be made accessible through a web portal on Copernicus Climate Data Store (C3S). The dataset includes a set of Climate Impact Indicators (CII&#8217;s) and new tools designed to evaluate the impacts of climate change on different sectors and industries. This data service will support European coastal sectors to adapt to changes in sea levels associated with climate change. In this presentation we will also demonstrate how the C3S coastal service can be used to enhance the understanding of local climate impacts.

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PREDICTING EXTREME WATER LEVELS AROUND AUSTRALIA

Coastal Engineering Proceedings ◽

10.9753/icce.v36v.currents.7 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 7

Author(s):

Charitha Pattiaratchi ◽

Yasha Hetzel ◽

Ivica Janekovic

Keyword(s):

Sea Level ◽

Land Use Planning ◽

Wind Waves ◽

Storm Surges ◽

Flood Management ◽

Water Levels ◽

Coastal Development ◽

Sea Levels ◽

Extreme Water Levels ◽

Rising Sea Levels

Throughout history, coastal settlers have had to adapt to periodic coastal flooding. However, as a society we have become increasingly vulnerable to extreme water level events as our cities and our patterns of coastal development become more intricate, populated and interdependent. In addition to this, there is now a real and growing concern about rising sea levels. Accurate estimates of extreme water levels are therefore critical for coastal planning and emergency planning and response. The occurrence of extreme water levels along low-lying, highly populated and/or developed coastlines can lead to considerable loss of life and billions of dollars of damage to coastal infrastructure. Therefore, it is vitally important that the exceedance probabilities of extreme water levels be accurately evaluated to inform risk-based flood management, engineering and future land-use planning. This objectives of this study was to estimate present day extreme sea level exceedance probabilities due to combination of storm surges, tides and mean sea level (including wind-waves) around the coastline of Australia.Recorded Presentation from the vICCE (YouTube Link): https://youtu.be/vGaB85VRujs

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GESLA Version 3: A major update to the global higher-frequency sea-level dataset

10.31223/x5mp65 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Ivan Haigh ◽

Marta Marcos ◽

Stefan Talke ◽

Philip Woodworth ◽

John Hunter ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Sea Level ◽

Storm Surges ◽

Coastal Engineering ◽

Multiple Sources ◽

Sea Levels ◽

The Third ◽

Wide Range ◽

The World ◽

Extreme Sea Levels ◽

Level Analysis

This paper describes a major update to the quasi-global, higher-frequency sea-level dataset known as GESLA (Global Extreme Sea Level Analysis). Versions 1 (released 2009) and 2 (released 2016) of the dataset have been used in many published studies, across a wide range of oceanographic and coastal engineering-related investigations concerned with evaluating tides, storm surges, extreme sea levels and other related processes. The third version of the dataset (released 2021), presented here, contains twice the number of years of data (91,021), and nearly four times the number of records (5,119), compared to version 2. The dataset consists of records obtained from multiple sources around the world. This paper describes the assembly of the dataset, its processing and its format, and outlines potential future improvements. The dataset is available from https://www.gesla.org.

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Extremes floods of Venice: characteristics, dynamics, past and future evolution

10.5194/nhess-2020-359 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Piero Lionello ◽

David Barriopedro ◽

Christian Ferrarin ◽

Robert J. Nicholls ◽

Mirko Orlic ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Sea Level Rise ◽

Sea Level ◽

Large Range ◽

Storm Surges ◽

City Centre ◽

Atlantic Sector ◽

Mean Sea Level ◽

Sea Levels ◽

Extreme Sea Levels ◽

The Future

Abstract. Floods in the Venice city centre result from the superposition of several factors: astronomical tides, seiches and atmospherically forced fluctuations, which include storm surges, meteotsunamis, and surges caused by planetary waves. All these factors can contribute to positive sea-level anomalies individually and can also result in extreme sea-level events when they act constructively. The largest extreme sea level events have been mostly caused by storm surges produced by the Sirocco winds. This leads to a characteristic seasonal cycle, with the largest and most frequent events occurring from November to March. Storm surges can be produced by cyclones whose centers are located either north or south of the Alps. The most intense historical events have been produced by cyclogenesis in the western Mediterranean, to the west of the main cyclogenetic area of the Mediterranean region in the Gulf of Genoa. Only a small fraction of the interannual variability of extreme sea levels is described by fluctuations in the dominant patterns of atmospheric circulation variability over the Euro-Atlantic sector. Therefore, decadal fluctuations of sea-level extremes remain largely unexplained. In particular, the effect of the 11-year solar cycle appears to be small, non-stationary or masked by other factors. The historic increase in the frequency of extreme sea levels since the mid 19th Century is explained by relative sea level rise, with no long term trend in the intensity of the atmospheric forcing. Analogously, future regional relative mean sea level rise will be the most important driver of increasing duration and intensity of Venice floods through this century, overwhelming the small decrease in marine storminess projected during the 21 century. Consequently, the future increase of extreme sea levels covers a large range, partly reflecting the highly uncertain mass contributions to future mean sea level rise from the melting of Antarctica and Greenland ice-sheets, especially towards the end of the century. In conclusion, for a high emission scenario the magnitude of 1-in-100 year sea level events at the North Adriatic coast is projected to increase up to 65 % and 160 % in 2050 and 2100, respectively, with respect to the present value, and subject to continued increase thereafter. Local subsidence can further contribute to the future increase of extreme sea levels. This analysis shows the need for adaptive planning of coastal defenses with solutions that can be adopted to face the large range of plausible future sea-level extremes.

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Economic damages from Hurricane Sandy attributable to sea level rise caused by anthropogenic climate change

Nature Communications ◽

10.1038/s41467-021-22838-1 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Benjamin H. Strauss ◽

Philip M. Orton ◽

Klaus Bittermann ◽

Maya K. Buchanan ◽

Daniel M. Gilford ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Sea Level Rise ◽

Sea Level ◽

East Coast ◽

The United States ◽

Hurricane Sandy ◽

Water Levels ◽

Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽

Economic Damage ◽

Sea Levels

AbstractIn 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the United States, creating widespread coastal flooding and over $60 billion in reported economic damage. The potential influence of climate change on the storm itself has been debated, but sea level rise driven by anthropogenic climate change more clearly contributed to damages. To quantify this effect, here we simulate water levels and damage both as they occurred and as they would have occurred across a range of lower sea levels corresponding to different estimates of attributable sea level rise. We find that approximately $8.1B ($4.7B–$14.0B, 5th–95th percentiles) of Sandy’s damages are attributable to climate-mediated anthropogenic sea level rise, as is extension of the flood area to affect 71 (40–131) thousand additional people. The same general approach demonstrated here may be applied to impact assessments for other past and future coastal storms.

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Flooding Conditions at Aveiro Port (Portugal) within the Framework of Projected Climate Change

Journal of Marine Science and Engineering ◽

10.3390/jmse9060595 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (6) ◽

pp. 595

Author(s):

Américo Soares Ribeiro ◽

Carina Lurdes Lopes ◽

Magda Catarina Sousa ◽

Moncho Gomez-Gesteira ◽

João Miguel Dias

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Sea Level ◽

Climate Change Impacts ◽

Storm Surges ◽

Historical Period ◽

Return Periods ◽

Wave Regime ◽

Mean Sea Level ◽

Sea Levels ◽

Far Future

Ports constitute a significant influence in the economic activity in coastal areas through operations and infrastructures to facilitate land and maritime transport of cargo. Ports are located in a multi-dimensional environment facing ocean and river hazards. Higher warming scenarios indicate Europe’s ports will be exposed to higher risk due to the increase in extreme sea levels (ESL), a combination of the mean sea level, tide, and storm surge. Located on the west Iberia Peninsula, the Aveiro Port is located in a coastal lagoon exposed to ocean and river flows, contributing to higher flood risk. This study aims to assess the flood extent for Aveiro Port for historical (1979–2005), near future (2026–2045), and far future (2081–2099) periods scenarios considering different return periods (10, 25, and 100-year) for the flood drivers, through numerical simulations of the ESL, wave regime, and riverine flows simultaneously. Spatial maps considering the flood extent and calculated area show that most of the port infrastructures' resilience to flooding is found under the historical period, with some marginal floods. Under climate change impacts, the port flood extent gradually increases for higher return periods, where most of the terminals are at high risk of being flooded for the far-future period, whose contribution is primarily due to mean sea-level rise and storm surges.

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Estimating contribution of high-frequency sea-level oscillations to the extreme sea levels in the Adriatic Sea

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4602 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Krešimir Ruić ◽

Jadranka Šepić ◽

Maja Karlović ◽

Iva Međugorac

Keyword(s):

Time Series ◽

Sea Level ◽

High Frequency ◽

Adriatic Sea ◽

Tide Gauge ◽

Data Series ◽

Sea Levels ◽

Short Period ◽

Extreme Sea Levels ◽

Sea Level Oscillations

Extreme sea levels are known to hit the Adriatic Sea and to occasionally cause floods that produce severe material damage. Whereas the contribution of longer-period (T > 2 h) sea-level oscillations to the phenomena has been well researched, the contribution of the shorter period (T <&#160;2 h) oscillations is yet to be determined. With this aim, data of 1-min sampling resolution were collected for 20 tide gauges, 10 located at the Italian (north and west) and 10 at the Croatian (east) Adriatic coast. Analyses were done on time series of 3 to 15 years length, with the latest data coming from 2020, and with longer data series available for the Croatian coast. Sea level data were thoroughly checked, and spurious data were removed.&#160;For each station, extreme sea levels were defined as events during which sea level surpasses its 99.9 percentile value. The contribution of short-period oscillations to extremes was then estimated from corresponding high-frequency (T < 2 h) series. Additionally, for four Croatian tide gauge stations (Rovinj, Bakar, Split, and Dubrovnik), for period of 1956-2004, extreme sea levels were also determined from the hourly sea level time series, with the contribution of short-period oscillations visually estimated from the original tide gauge charts.&#160;&#160;Spatial and temporal distribution of contribution of short-period sea-level oscillations to the extreme sea level in the Adriatic were estimated. It was shown that short-period sea-level oscillation can significantly contribute to the overall extremes and should be considered when estimating flooding levels.&#160;

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What can idealized storm surge simulations tell us about worst case scenarios?

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12284 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Elin Andrée ◽

Jian Su ◽

Martin Drews ◽

Morten Andreas Dahl Larsen ◽

Asger Bendix Hansen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Wind Speed ◽

Sea Level ◽

North Sea ◽

Wind Direction ◽

Water Levels ◽

Sea Levels ◽

The North ◽

The North Sea ◽

Sea Coast ◽

North Sea Coast

The potential impacts of extreme sea level events are becoming more apparent to the public and policy makers alike. As the magnitude of these events are expected to increase due to climate change, and increased coastal urbanization results in ever increasing stakes in the coastal zones, the need for risk assessments is growing too.The physical conditions that generate extreme sea levels are highly dependent on site specific conditions, such as bathymetry, tidal regime, wind fetch and the shape of the coastline. For a low-lying country like Denmark, which consists of a peninsula and islands that partition off the semi-enclosed Baltic Sea from the North Sea, a better understanding of how the local sea level responds to wind forcing is urgently called for.We here present a map for Denmark that shows the most efficient wind directions for generating extreme sea levels, for a total of 70 locations distributed all over the country&#8217;s coastlines. The maps are produced by conducting simulations with a high resolution, 3D-ocean model, which is used for operational storm surge modelling at the Danish Meteorological Institute. We force the model with idealized wind fields that maintain a fixed wind speed and wind direction over the entire model domain. Simulations are conducted for one wind speed and one wind direction at a time, generating ensembles of a set of wind directions for a fixed wind speed, as well as a set of wind speeds for a fixed wind direction, respectively.For each wind direction, we find that the maximum water level at a given location increases linearly with the wind speed, and the slope values show clear spatial patterns, for example distinguishing the Danish southern North Sea coast from the central or northern North Sea Coast. The slope values are highest along the southwestern North Sea coast, where the passage of North Atlantic low pressure systems over the shallow North Sea, as well as the large tidal range, result in a much larger range of variability than in the more sheltered Inner Danish Waters. However, in our simulations the large fetch of the Baltic Sea, in combination with the funneling effect of the Danish Straits, result in almost as high water levels as along the North Sea coast.Although the wind forcing is completely synthetic with no spatial and temporal structure of a real storm, this idealized approach allows us to systematically investigate the sea level response at the boundaries of what is physically plausible. We evaluate the results from these simulations by comparison to peak water levels from a 58 year long, high resolution ocean hindcast, with promising agreement.

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Development of flood probability charts for urban drainage network in coastal areas through a simplified joint assessment approach

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences ◽

10.5194/hess-15-3115-2011 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 15 (10) ◽

pp. 3115-3122 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

R. Archetti ◽

A. Bolognesi ◽

A. Casadio ◽

M. Maglionico

Keyword(s):

Sea Level ◽

Drainage System ◽

Coastal Areas ◽

Operating Conditions ◽

Threshold Condition ◽

Urban Drainage ◽

Climate Variables ◽

Storm Events ◽

Hydraulic Simulation ◽

Sea Levels

Abstract. The operating conditions of urban drainage networks during storm events depend on the hydraulic conveying capacity of conduits and also on downstream boundary conditions. This is particularly true in coastal areas where the level of the receiving water body is directly or indirectly affected by tidal or wave effects. In such cases, not just different rainfall conditions (varying intensity and duration), but also different sea-levels and their effects on the network operation should be considered. This paper aims to study the behaviour of a seaside town storm sewer network, estimating the threshold condition for flooding and proposing a simplified method to assess the urban flooding severity as a function of climate variables. The case study is a portion of the drainage system of Rimini (Italy), implemented and numerically modelled by means of InfoWorks CS code. The hydraulic simulation of the sewerage system identified the percentage of nodes of the drainage system where flooding is expected to occur. Combining these percentages with both climate variables' values has lead to the definition of charts representing the combined degree of risk "rainfall-sea level" for the drainage system under investigation. A final comparison between such charts and the results obtained from a one-year rainfall-sea level time series has demonstrated the reliability of the analysis.

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HIDRA 1.0: Deep-Learning-Based Ensemble Sea Level Forecasting in the Northern Adriatic

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1161 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Lojze Žust ◽

Matjaž Ličer ◽

Anja Fettich ◽

Matej Kristan

Keyword(s):

Sea Level ◽

Ocean Circulation ◽

Tide Gauge ◽

Feature Learning ◽

Circulation Model ◽

Storm Surges ◽

Building Blocks ◽

Lead Times ◽

Atmospheric Forcing ◽

Northern Adriatic

Interactions between atmospheric forcing, topographic constraints to air and water flow, and resonant character of the basin make sea level modeling in Adriatic a challenging problem. In this study we present an ensemble deep-neural-network-based sea level forecasting method HIDRA, which outperforms our setup of the general ocean circulation model ensemble (NEMO v3.6) for all forecast lead times and at a minuscule fraction of the numerical cost (order of 2 &#215; 10-6). HIDRA exhibits larger bias but lower RMSE than our setup of NEMO over most of the residual sea level bins. It introduces a trainable atmospheric spatial encoder and employs fusion of atmospheric and sea level features into a self-contained network which enables discriminative feature learning. HIDRA architecture building blocks are experimentally analyzed in detail and compared to alternative approaches. Results show the importance of sea level input for forecast lead times below 24 h and the importance of atmospheric input for longer lead times. The best performance is achieved by considering the input as the total sea level, split into disjoint sets of tidal and residual signals. This enables HIDRA to optimize the prediction fidelity with respect to atmospheric forcing while compensating for the errors in the tidal model. HIDRA is trained and analysed on a ten-year (2006-2016) timeseries of atmospheric surface fields from a single member of ECMWF atmospheric ensemble. In the testing phase, both HIDRA and NEMO ensemble systems are forced by the ECMWF atmospheric ensemble. Their performance is evaluated on a one-year (2019) hourly time series from tide gauge in Koper (Slovenia). Spectral and continuous wavelet analysis of the forecasts at the semi-diurnal frequency (12 h)-1 and at the ground-state basin seiche frequency (21.5 h)-1 is performed. The energy at the basin seiche in the HIDRA forecast is close to the observed, while our setup of NEMO underestimates it. Analyses of the January 2015 and November 2019 storm surges indicate that HIDRA has learned to mimic the timing and amplitude of basin seiches.

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