Spatiotemporal patterns of extreme sea levels along the western North-Atlantic coasts

Sanne Muis; Ning Lin; Martin Verlaan; Hessel C. Winsemius; Philip J. Ward; Jeroen C.J.H. Aerts

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-40157-w

Spatiotemporal patterns of extreme sea levels along the western North-Atlantic coasts

Sanne Muis^*
, Ning Lin
, Martin Verlaan
, Hessel C. Winsemius
, Philip J. Ward
, Jeroen C.J.H. Aerts

^*Corresponding author for this work

Water and Climate Risk

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

The western North-Atlantic coast experienced major coastal floods in recent years. Coastal floods are primarily composed of tides and storm surges due to tropical (TCs) and extra-tropical cyclones (ETCs). We present a reanalysis from 1988 to 2015 of extreme sea levels that explicitly include TCs for the western North-Atlantic coastline. Validation shows a good agreement between modeled and observed sea levels and demonstrates that the framework can capture large-scale variability in extreme sea levels. We apply the 28-year reanalysis to analyze spatiotemporal patterns. Along the US Atlantic coasts the contribution of tides can be significant, with the average contribution of tides during the 10 largest events up to 55% in some locations, whereas along the Mexican Southern Gulf coast, the average contribution of tides over the largest 10 events is generally below 25%. At the US Atlantic coast, ETCs are responsible for 8.5 out of the 10 largest extreme events, whereas at the Gulf Coast and Caribbean TCs dominate. During the TC season more TC-driven events exceed a 10-year return period. During winter, there is a peak in ETC-driven events. Future research directions include coupling the framework with synthetic tropical cyclone tracks and extension to the global scale.

Original language	English
Article number	3391
Journal	Scientific Reports
Volume	9
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-40157-w
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2019

Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in the form of a VICI grant (grant no. 453-14-006), Amsterdam Water Science, and US National Science Foundation (grant no. EAR-1520683). S.M. received additional funding from the European research project RISES-AM (grant agreement no. 603396) and was also supported with a Fulbright fellowship as a visiting scholar to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University. P.J.W. received additional funding from NWO in the form of a VIDI grant (grant no. 016.161.324). We thank Thomas Wahl and one anonymous reviewer for their comments, which allowed to improve the manuscript. The authors also would like to thank Deepak Vatvani and Maialen Irazoqui Apecechea from Deltares for their support with the GTSM simulations. Reza Marsooli, Nadia Bloemendaal, Anaïs Couasnon are acknowledged for the valuable discussions on tropical cyclones and statistical analysis. We thank SURFsara (www.surfsara.nl) for their support in using the Lisa Computer Cluster. The daily maxima of the surge and total waters of this reanalysis dataset are freely available for other researchers at the archive of the 4TU. Research Data (https://doi.org/10.4121/uuid:e2c315e0-102f-45c6-b834-b89e26229265). Other data may be available upon request ([email protected]). The input data used are from cited references and is generally freely available online.

Funders	Funder number
European Commission
Princeton University
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Amsterdam Water Science
???publication-publication-funding-organisation-not-added???	453-14-006, 016.161.324
National Science Foundation	603396, 1520683, EAR-1520683
Seventh Framework Programme	EAR-1520683

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 14 Life Below Water

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10.1038/s41598-019-40157-w

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6399338

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title = "Spatiotemporal patterns of extreme sea levels along the western North-Atlantic coasts",

abstract = "The western North-Atlantic coast experienced major coastal floods in recent years. Coastal floods are primarily composed of tides and storm surges due to tropical (TCs) and extra-tropical cyclones (ETCs). We present a reanalysis from 1988 to 2015 of extreme sea levels that explicitly include TCs for the western North-Atlantic coastline. Validation shows a good agreement between modeled and observed sea levels and demonstrates that the framework can capture large-scale variability in extreme sea levels. We apply the 28-year reanalysis to analyze spatiotemporal patterns. Along the US Atlantic coasts the contribution of tides can be significant, with the average contribution of tides during the 10 largest events up to 55\% in some locations, whereas along the Mexican Southern Gulf coast, the average contribution of tides over the largest 10 events is generally below 25\%. At the US Atlantic coast, ETCs are responsible for 8.5 out of the 10 largest extreme events, whereas at the Gulf Coast and Caribbean TCs dominate. During the TC season more TC-driven events exceed a 10-year return period. During winter, there is a peak in ETC-driven events. Future research directions include coupling the framework with synthetic tropical cyclone tracks and extension to the global scale.",

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AU - Ward, Philip J.

AU - Aerts, Jeroen C.J.H.

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Spatiotemporal patterns of extreme sea levels along the western North-Atlantic coasts

Abstract

Funding

UN SDGs

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