Impacts of sea level rise and typhoon intensity on storm surges and waves around the coastal area of Qingdao

Abstract

Climate changes, including sea level rise (SLR) and typhoon intensification (TI), have been widely accepted in coastal communities and significantly affect coastal engineering. In this work, an integrally-coupled tide-surge-wave model was developed to simulate storm tides and waves around the coastal area of Qingdao. The model was validated with observed data under historical typhoon events. The simulated results illustrate that tides change obviously at most representative stations within Jiaozhou Bay. Meanwhile, the effect of SLR on astronomical tide in the flood and the ebb period is more significant than that of the peak tide period. Further investigations reveal that SLR and TI affect storm tides and waves in different ways and the influences are different within Jiaozhou Bay and along the open coast. Besides, the combined effects of SLR and TI on peak storm tides and wave heights are remarkable, which are not a simply linear superposition and present a spatially non-uniform and non-liner pattern. Therefore, it is essential to adopt the coupled model to estimate the possible maximum risk of storm surges and waves around the coastal area of Qingdao. Taking SLR and TI into consideration, the peak of elevation near shore could experience a significant amplification in the future.