Development of a fully coupled wind stress-wave-ocean coastal model system

Abstract

ABSTRACT To conserve momentum flux across the air-sea interface, a new wind stress-wave-ocean coupled coastal model system is developed. Via simulating a specific idealized tropical cyclone (TC), this model is firstly applied to study the impacts of three wave effects, including the commonly studied wave-breaking induced acceleration, wave-enhanced bottom friction and the seldom studied wave modified surface stress (WMWS), and the conservation of momentum flux across air-sea interface (MFB) on the predictions of storm surge and inundation. It is then further applied to investigate the role of above four effects in modeling the peak surge and inundation by generalizing the TC forcing with various physical parameters, including the TC intensity, size, translation speed, and bottom slope. The model results reveal that WMWS can contribute considerably to the total surge height and inundation distance in a relatively high-intensity TC and its contribution depends weakly on the varying bottom slopes, TC sizes or translation speeds. By contrast, the MFB can only considerably reduce the maximum storm surge with a small bottom slope, while its reduction on inundation distance is more significant. The present study thus highlights the importance and necessity of incorporating the commonly ignored effects of WMWS and MFB in coastal modeling.