92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Tuesday, 24 January 2012: 1:45 PM
IOOS/SURA Extratropical Storm Inundation Testbed: Preliminary Results for Scituate MA
Room 337 (New Orleans Convention Center )
Changsheng Chen, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, New Bedford, MA; and R. Beardsley, R. Luettich, D. Slinn, H. Wang, J. Westerink, and W. Perrie

One objective of the inundation/storm surge component of the IOOS/SURA SUPER-REGIONAL COASTAL MODELING TESTBED is to evaluate the capabilities of three unstructured-grid ocean models (FVCOM, ADCIRC, SELFE) coupled with three surface wave models (SWAN, SWAVE, and WWM) and the NWS structured-grid SLOSH model to simulate extratropical storm-induced inundation in the Northeast. Scituate (MA) was chosen as the extratropical testbed site because a) her outer coast and harbor experience significant flooding during strong Nor-easters, b) the Taunton NWS (MA) Weather Forecast Office already had selected Scituate as a pilot site for the Northeast Coastal Ocean Forecast System (NECOFS) development group to demonstrate an “end-to-end” inundation forecast system, and c) with IOOS Northeast Regional Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems (NERACOOS) support, a high-resolution Scituate FVCOM inundation grid was developed and nested within the NECOFS regional GOM3 model system. This enabled the Scituate FVCOM inundation grid to be used as the common testbed grid and regional forcing provided by NECOFS. In addition to an initial comparison of the model's abilities to hindcast the tides for May 2010, three major storms were selected for hindcasting: May 2005, April 2007, and December 27, 2010. Preliminary results of model-data and model-model comparisons, grid resolution, and sensitivity testing will be presented.

Supplementary URL: