Abstract
Hurricane Irene caused widespread and significant impacts along the U.S. east coast during 27–29 August 2011. During this period, the storm moved across eastern North Carolina and then tracked northward crossing into Long Island and western New England. Impacts included severe flooding from the mid-Atlantic states into eastern New York and western New England, widespread wind damage and power outages across a large portion of southern and central New England, and a major storm surge along portions of the Long Island coast. The objective of this study was to conduct retrospective simulations using the Advanced Research Weather Research and Forecast (WRF-ARW) model in an effort to reconstruct the storm’s surface wind field during the period of 27–29 August 2011. The goal was to evaluate how to use the WRF modeling system as a tool for reconstructing the surface wind field from historical storm events to support storm surge studies. The results suggest that, with even modest data assimilation applied to these simulations, the model was able to resolve the detailed structure of the storm, the storm track, and the spatial surface wind field pattern very well. The WRF model shows real potential for being used as a tool to analyze historical storm events to support storm surge studies.
Highlights
During the period when Hurricane Irene was moving northward along the U.S east coast, the storm was encountering increasing wind shear and cooler sea surface temperatures and was slowly weakening as it tracked from the Carolinas to New England
This study presents some results of an ongoing effort to optimize the WRF model for storm surge modeling applications
Meteorological Satellite Programs F-16 Satellite. The results of both the initial WRF simulations on the 4-km resolution nested domain and the WRF-AHW simulations on the 2-km nested domain suggest that with even modest data assimilation applied to these simulations, the model was able to resolve the detailed structure of the storm, the storm track, and the spatial surface wind field pattern very well
Summary
During the period when Hurricane Irene was moving northward along the U.S east coast, the storm was encountering increasing wind shear and cooler sea surface temperatures and was slowly weakening as it tracked from the Carolinas to New England. Storm surge studies typically use a variety of approaches to re-analyze historical storms These include parametric wind models [2,3] to develop a radial profile of the storm winds based on available data typically issued in National Hurricane Center advisories, including storm central pressure, maximum wind speed, and radius of maximum wind. These parametric-based approaches have been modified recently to account for storm asymmetries by allowing for storm quadrant specific profiles, again using data from available advisories that contain information about wind radii in each quadrant of the storm. Other approaches include hurricane boundary layer models [4] and objective analysis systems such as the Interactive Objective Kinematic Analysis (IOKA) system from Ocean Weather [5]
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