the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Total water levels along the South Atlantic Bight during three along-shelf propagating tropical cyclones: relative contributions of storm surge and wave runup
Katherine Serafin
Christie Hegermiller
John C. Warner
Maitane Olabarrieta
Abstract. Total water levels (TWLs), including the contribution of wind waves, associated with tropical cyclones (TC) are among the most damaging hazards faced by coastal communities. According to the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; Masson-Delmotte et al., 2021), TC–induced damages are expected to increase because of stronger TC intensity, sea level rise, and increased populations along the coasts. TC intensity, translation speed, and distance to the coast affect the magnitude and duration of increased TWLs and wind waves. Under climate change, the proportion of high–intensity TCs are projected to increase globally (IPCC; Masson-Delmotte et al., 2021), whereas the variation pattern of TC translation speed also depends on regions (Yamaguchi et al., 2020). There is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the linkages among TC characteristics and TWL components. In the past years, hurricanes Matthew (2016), Dorian (2019), and Isaias (2020) propagated over the South Atlantic Bight (SAB) with similar paths but resulted in different coastal impacts. We combined in situ observations and numerical simulations with the Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere–Wave–Sediment Transport (COAWST) modeling system to analyze the extreme TWLs under the three TCs. Model verification showed that the TWL components were well reproduced by the present model setup. Our results showed that peak TWL depends mainly on the TC intensity, the distance to the TC eye, and the TC heading direction. A decrease of TC translation speed primarily led to longer exceedance duration of TWL, which may lead to more severe damage. Wave–dependent water level components (i.e., wave setup and wave swash) were found to dominate the peak TWL within the near–TC wave field (60 %). Our results also showed that in specific conditions, the pre–storm wave runup associated with the TC–induced swell may lead to TWLs higher than at the peak of the storm. This was the case along the SAB during Hurricane Isaias. Isaias’s fast TC translation speed and the fact that its swell was not blocked by any islands were the main factors contributing to these peak TWLs ahead of the storm peak.
Chu-En Hsu et al.
Status: open (until 18 Jun 2023)
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CC1: 'Comment on nhess-2023-49', Juan Felipe Paniagua-Arroyave, 09 Apr 2023
reply
Respected colleagues,
Thanks for your time and consideration. I just wanted to highlight a process that might introduce discrepancies between your model results and observations. We documented tidal distortions (overtides) related to a hurricane-induced current at the inner shelf near Cape Canaveral:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019JC015021
You might want to explore whether this mechanism could add to your uncertainties or not. We documented the hurricane-induced overtides during Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
Best wishes,
PaniCitation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-49-CC1 -
RC1: 'Comment on nhess-2023-49', Anonymous Referee #1, 18 May 2023
reply
The manuscript entitled “Total water levels along the South Atlantic Bight during three along-shelf propagating tropical cyclones: relative contributions of storm surge and wave runup” by Hsu et al. aims at improving the understanding of the linkages among tropical cyclones characteristics and total water level components. Hurricanes Matthew (2016), Dorian (2019), and Isaias (2020) were chosen as case studies in the South Atlantic Bight and numerical simulations (COAWST modeling system) combined with in situ observations were used to model the extreme total water levels induced by them. The topic addressed in the manuscript is in line with the scope of the NHESS journal and is relevant to the scientific community to better understand storm impacts and their effects on the coastlines.
I found that the manuscript is quite long, not always smooth and streamlined reading due to the presence of many acronyms and subsections. I suggest reformulating some statements or thinking about the possibility to merge some subsections. Therefore, I hope my suggestions are helpful in improving it.For future publications focused on the same tropical cyclones analyzed here, I suggest exploring the presence of tidal distortion near Cape Canaveral during Hurricane Matthew in 2016, as highlighted in the public discussion associated with your preprint (https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-49-CC1).
As a result of the above considerations, I conclude that the manuscript is suitable for publication with some minor revisions. I provide detailed general and point-by-point comments/suggestions below.
General comments:
1) I suggest to avoid references in the abstract section because it should be stand alone. In this section, you must briefly introduce your personal contributions instead of the work of others.
2) As the manuscript stands today, some of the methods used in this application are in the introduction (e.g. the empirical formulations for R2). It would be helpful to have a methods section easily accessible to the reader within the manuscript. Moreover, some findings are introduced in the discussion section (see e.g. Figs. 10 and 11). I suggest merging the results and discussion sections into one section. Alternatively, if you want to keep this setup, please use this section only to discuss your findings.
3) Please, introduce the acronyms in the main text. For example, the translation speed of storm (Vt) is introduced in the table caption but not in the main text. Please, uniform the style throughout the manuscript.
4) Avoid using symbols as +, -, or = inside brackets introduced in the main text, unless you are using an inline equation such as in line 418.
5) Sometimes you use “peak 𝜂𝑇𝑠” and other times “peak 𝜂𝑇”. Be consistent throughout the text.Point-by-point comments:
- Figures 2, 3, 7, 11, A4, and A3. They lost quality during the exportation step. Lines, dots, axes labels, internal and external box grids are blurred. Please, improve the resolution.
- Lines 39-42. It would be helpful to summarize the classification definition of the four regimes. There is the reference for more details. Maybe something like “[…] regimes: inundation (TWLs ≥ Dcrest), swash (TWLs < Dbase), overwash (…), and collision (…). Among these, coastal dunes experience […]” is more appropriate.
- Line 53. Avoid “=” inside the brackets. For example, you can say “(i.e. the sum of astronomic tides, mean sea level, and storm surge). You can also indicate the name of the variable you introduced. I suppose is the water level observed.
- Line 54. If data are available at the NOAA repository, please add reference and link.
- Line 66. Use “Eqs. 1 and 2” instead of “Eq. 1 and Eq. 2”.
- Lines 70-71. Avoid the use of “=” inside brackets. Use instead “is”.
- Line 72. Change Eq. 2 with Eq. 1.
- Lines 92-97. I suggest moving the statement “Thus, we employed […] for analysis and comparison” after “Despite the importance of […] had not been thoroughly examined”. Also, please add “on the contrary” or “conversely” before “Senechal et al. (2011)”.
- Lines 98-103. Please, reformulate the statements. For example, “Under projected climatic conditions, TC characteristics are projected to change at global scale (add reference). Thereby the proportion of high-intensity […] to increase. In this context of change, the main goal of this study is to ascertain how TC […] to TWLs. With that aim […] similar tracks”.
- Line 108. The acronym Vt is introduced in Table 1 but not in the main text.
- Line 145. Explain how you evaluate the suitability of the chosen exchange intervals.
- Lines 152-153. Please, move the link after RAP and add the reference.
- Lines 155 and 162. Please, add references for the GFS and HYCOM database.
- Lines 165-168. Add reference for the Flather boundary. Furthermore, panel A is indicated with a capital letter in the main text and in the caption of the figure while in the figure a lowercase letter is used. Please, uniform the style.
- Line 186. Please, add the repository link and references for NOAA tide gauges and NDBC buoys.
- Line 219. Tp is not yet introduced in the text.
- Caption of Figure 4. I suggest using “the red, cyan, and black points indicated […]”.
- Table 2. Improve the table headers. I suppose that Dbase refers to the second column.
- Lines 276-277. As reported in Figure 5, the difference of 22.6 hours is for TETA. Please, change each of the contents in the brackets.
- Figures 7 and 11. The x-axis label is missing.
- Figure 8. I suggest to introduce this figure in the supplementary material.
- Figure 10. Use A1, A2), B1, B2) and C1, C2) in the figure caption.
- Line 455. Change “in contrary” with “on the contrary”.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-49-RC1
Chu-En Hsu et al.
Chu-En Hsu et al.
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