Modeling and estimation of hurricane wind hazard affecting Mexican coastal regions

Abstract

In the present study, we develop a stochastic track model that can be used to sample the synthetic tropical cyclone (TC) (i.e., hurricane) tracks affecting Mexico with their genesis from the Atlantic basin and the northeastern Pacific basin. The developed model is validated based on the comparison of the statistics of the main characteristics of the historical and synthetic landfalling TC events. We estimate the TC wind hazard for the coastal regions of Mexico by using the historical or synthetic TC tracks in combination with a gradient wind field based model or a vertically averaged boundary layer slab model. Such a TC wind hazard assessment for Mexico is the first of its kind. The results indicate that the use of a short period of the historical tracks for TC wind hazard is inadequate, and the use of the simple gradient wind field based model with well-calibrated scaling factors is efficient and effective for estimating TC wind hazard. The comparison of the probability distributions for the extreme TC winds obtained using the developed stochastic track model to those based on surface wind observations for a few meteorological stations confirms the adequacy of the model.