Abstract
We assess the suitability of ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) data for the global modeling of tropical cyclone (TC) storm surges. We extract meteorological forcing from the IFS at a 0.225° horizontal resolution for eight historical TCs and simulate the corresponding surges using the global tide and surge model. Maximum surge heights for Hurricanes Irma and Sandy are compared with tide gauge observations, with R2-values of 0.86 and 0.74 respectively. Maximum surge heights for the other TCs are in line with literature. Our case studies demonstrate that a horizontal resolution of 0.225° is sufficient for the large-scale modeling of TC surges. By upscaling the meteorological forcing to coarser resolutions as low as 1.0°, we assess the effects of horizontal resolution on the performance of surge modeling. We demonstrate that coarser resolutions result in lower-modeled surges for all case studies, with modeled surges up to 1 m lower for Irma and Nargis. The largest differences in surges between the different resolutions are found for the TCs with the highest surges. We discuss possible drivers of maximum surge heights (TC size, intensity, and coastal slope and complexity), and find that coastal complexity and slope play a more profound role than TC size and intensity alone. The highest surges are found in areas with complex coastlines (fractal dimension > 1.10) and, in general, shallow coastlines. Our findings show that using high-resolution meteorological forcing is particularly beneficial for areas prone to high TC surges, since these surges are reduced the most in coarse-resolution datasets.
Highlights
The strong winds and low pressures of tropical cyclones (TCs) often induce highly damaging storm surges, affecting people and economies over large coastal areas
We have assessed the suitability of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) as meteorological forcing for high-resolution storm surge modeling with Global Tide and Surge Model (GTSM)
GTSM coastal points used in the statistical analysis respectively, demonstrating that maximum surge heights and their spatial distributions are captured sufficiently well in our IFS-GTSM model setup to simulate historical TC storm surge events
Summary
The strong winds and low pressures of tropical cyclones (TCs) often induce highly damaging storm surges, affecting people and economies over large coastal areas. Hydrodynamic models are used to simulate storm surges, both for operational applications and risk assessments These hydrodynamic models use wind speed and mean sealevel pressure (MSLP) as forcing, which is usually derived from general circulation models (GCMs). Until recently, these GCMs had horizontal resolutions of 0.45°–1.8° All available climate reanalysis products have horizontal resolutions of up to 0.75°, including ERAInterim (Dee et al 2011) and NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis 1 (Kalnay et al 1996). Such resolutions are insufficient to fully resolve TC intensity, size, and track
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