Overview
Storm surge, a primary cause of coastal flooding during tropical and extratropical storm systems, occurs when a storm’s winds push water toward land. The water mass encounters shallower water as it moves toward shore, and thus must increase in height. Additional factors like a storm’s lower pressure and the waves generated by storm winds also contribute to the total surge that impacts a coast. Working with North Carolina scientists, RENCI is developing a new coastal modeling and forecasting system that incorporates atmospheric, storm surge, and hydrological models to improve coastal flood predictions.
The North Carolina Forecast System couples the surge and wave model ADCIRC+unSWAN with a several atmospheric prediction models, including the National Centers for Environmental Prediction’s operational weather forecasting model and RENCI’s high-resolution WRF modeling system for North Carolina. The system also ingests National Hurricane Center tropical system forecast tracks. In a test phase, hydrological river discharges are imposed as boundary conditions on the upper Tar and Neuse Rivers. The system runs four times a day under normal operations, and on demand during the tropical storm season. The system runs on RENCI’s Dell Nehalem cluster, Blueridge. The primary outputs of the system (water level and wave height) are published as Google Earth kml files and as shapefiles.
- ADCIRC+unSWAN models depth-averaged circulation, water level, and the irregular, wind-driven wave field, coupling the long- and short- wave fields using a common unstructured model grid. The coupling occurs in real-time, through exchange of water level and currents from ADCIRC to unSWAN, and wave radiation stresses from unSWAN to ADCIRC.
- A similar system is also used in the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program project, which is evaluating the flood hazard risk for coastal North Carolina counties using high-resolution model grids of the coast.
- Additional projects include:
- Evaluation of the Flood Hazard for FEMA’s Region 3 (Chesapeake and Delaware Bays)
- Application of the ADCIRC modeling system for the North Carolina Sea Level Rise Risk Management Study
Overview
Storm surge, a primary cause of coastal flooding during tropical and extratropical storm systems, occurs when a storm’s winds push water toward land. The water mass encounters shallower water as it moves toward shore, and thus must increase in height. Additional factors like a storm’s lower pressure and the waves generated by storm winds also contribute to the total surge that impacts a coast. Working with North Carolina scientists, RENCI is developing a new coastal modeling and forecasting system that incorporates atmospheric, storm surge, and hydrological models to improve coastal flood predictions.
The North Carolina Forecast System couples the surge and wave model ADCIRC+unSWAN with a several atmospheric prediction models, including the National Centers for Environmental Prediction’s operational weather forecasting model and RENCI’s high-resolution WRF modeling system for North Carolina. The system also ingests National Hurricane Center tropical system forecast tracks. In a test phase, hydrological river discharges are imposed as boundary conditions on the upper Tar and Neuse Rivers. The system runs four times a day under normal operations, and on demand during the tropical storm season. The system runs on RENCI’s Dell Nehalem cluster, Blueridge. The primary outputs of the system (water level and wave height) are published as Google Earth kml files and as shapefiles.
- ADCIRC+unSWAN models depth-averaged circulation, water level, and the irregular, wind-driven wave field, coupling the long- and short- wave fields using a common unstructured model grid. The coupling occurs in real-time, through exchange of water level and currents from ADCIRC to unSWAN, and wave radiation stresses from unSWAN to ADCIRC.
- A similar system is also used in the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program project, which is evaluating the flood hazard risk for coastal North Carolina counties using high-resolution model grids of the coast.
- Additional projects include:
- Evaluation of the Flood Hazard for FEMA’s Region 3 (Chesapeake and Delaware Bays)
- Application of the ADCIRC modeling system for the North Carolina Sea Level Rise Risk Management Study
Funding
State of North Carolina
FEMA
Project Leaders
Brian Blanton, RENCI
Project Team
Ken Galluppi, Disaster group manager
Brian Etherton, WRF modeling
Howard Lander, graphics and system programming
Partners
UNC-Chapel Hill
Institute for Marine Sciences
Applied Research Associate/IntraRisk
US Army Corps of Engineers, Field Research Facility
NC Division of Emergency Management
