Abstract
Meteotsunamis originating from atmospheric pressure disturbances have frequently occurred in oceans worldwide and their destructive long waves have recently threatened local coastal communities. In particular, meteotsunamis occurring in the Yellow Sea caused unexpected casualties and property damage to local communities on the western coast of the Korean Peninsula in 2007 and 2008. These events attracted the attention of many engineers and scientists because abrupt extreme waves have struck several coasts and ports even under fine weather conditions. Furthermore, the Yellow Sea has the highest tide and most powerful tidal currents in the world, and consequently, meteotsunami events there could be more destructive and harmful to local coastal communities when such events occur during high tide or a critical phase with strong tidal currents. In this study, numerical experiments were conducted to identify the qualitative effect of the interaction between a meteotsunami and the tide on the generation and amplification mechanisms of meteotsunamis occurring in the Yellow Sea. In general, small-scale meteotsunamis, such as those that occur in the Yellow Sea, should be analyzed using a high-resolution modeling system because water motions can be affected by local terrain. To achieve this objective, high-resolution atmospheric modeling was conducted to reproduce the atmospheric pressure disturbances observed in the Yellow Sea; then, the generation and propagation of the meteotsunami over real topographies was simulated using a phase-resolving wave model. Both an atmospheric model (Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF)) and a shallow water equation model (COrnell Multigrid COupled Tsunami Model (COMCOT)) were employed to simulate the generation and transformation of the meteotsunami.
Highlights
The name “meteorological tsunami” (i.e., “meteotsunami”) was suggested for the long waves associated with atmospheric disturbances by references [1,2,3]
A series of numerical experiments were conducted to identify the generation and amplification mechanisms of meteotsunamis occurring in the Yellow Sea, and numerical results with and without tide modeling were analyzed to examine the interaction between a meteotsunami and the Atmosphere 2019, 10, 369 tide
We focused on nonlinear effects occurred during propagation of meteotsunamis over the Yellow Sea, such as meteotsunami-tide interaction, generation mechanism of meteotsunamis due to pressure changes, etc., and employed the nonlinear shallow equations model of COMCOT
Summary
The name “meteorological tsunami” (i.e., “meteotsunami”) was suggested for the long waves associated with atmospheric disturbances by references [1,2,3]. There are some local names for this phenomenon (e.g., “Abiki”, “Rissaga”, “Marrubio”, etc.) because long wave accidents induced by atmospheric pressure disturbances had already been reported before the term meteorological tsunami was proposed. The generation mechanism of meteotsunamis can be summarized as follows: water surface disturbances in the ocean from an atmospheric pressure jump are amplified by Proudman resonance [4,5]. Atmospherically induced long waves continuously gain energy from the traveling atmospheric pressure jump, of which the traveling speed is equal to propagation speed of long waves [6].
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