Coupling of Tides and Storm Surge for Operational Modeling on the Florida Coast

Abstract

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Coast Survey Development Laboratory (CSDL) and Meteorological Development Laboratory (MDL) are coupling tidal and storm surge models for operational use along the Florida coast. The Sea Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) model, developed by MDL, is used for climatological, deterministic, and probabilistic prediction of storm surge induced by hurricanes making landfall. SLOSH currently does not model tides. Doing so will provide forecasters with more realistic combined surge and tide guidance of potential inundation in their area once this work is put into operations. In this project, predicted tidal water levels calculated with harmonic constants from tide simulations are superimposed with storm surge modeling results. To obtain the harmonic constants required for the tidal predictions for SLOSH, a high-resolution ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) model has been run. While this has initially been done along the Florida coast, future plans are to do this in all regions covered by SLOSH.