Chapter 9 - Application of satellite altimetry for storm surge research and simulations along the coast of China

Abstract

Coastal storm surges generated by typhoons and tropical storms frequently strike China's coastal areas, causing serious casualties and economic losses. Satellite altimeters can capture storm surges, providing useful information for observing and understanding storm surge features. We introduce that using satellite altimeter is of great significance to improve the opportunity of observing extreme event signals, especially where multiple tracks of satellites exist. Altimeters can provide temporal and spatial variations of sea surface height anomalies across continental shelf, complementing tide gauges for the validation and improvement of storm surge models. Applications on the coast of China are presented to demonstrate the benefit of the remotely sensed altimetric measurements in the study of storm surge features, such as storm surge events induced by Typhoon Seth in 1994, Typhoon Utor, Nari, and Haiyan in 2001, Typhoon Hagupit in 2008, Typhoon Muifa in 2011, and Typhoon Usagi in 2013, as well as an extratropical storm surge in 1993. Prospect of storm surge monitoring from satellite altimetry is discussed. Integrating multiple altimetry satellites with numerical simulations can be an effective means of storm surge prediction in the future.