TY - JOUR
T1 - Heightened hurricane surge risk in northwest Florida revealed from climatological-hydrodynamic modeling and paleorecord reconstruction
AU - Lin, Ning
AU - Lane, Philip
AU - Emanuel, Kerry A.
AU - Sullivan, Richard M.
AU - Donnelly, Jeffrey P.
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper brings to fruition research started by our coauthor and now late colleague and friend, Phil Lane. Phil was a bright and gifted young researcher and our hearts are heavy with his loss. His seemingly limitless potential and passion for studying hurricanes is now lost to the world, and we are certainly worse off for it. Phil was a very kind and giving person with his time and insights, and we take some solace in that his contributions to paleohurricane research will continue to resonate for years to come. This research was funded by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) grant NA11OAR4310101 and National Science Foundation (NSF) grants OCE-0903020 and OCE-1250506. The National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) provided the LiDAR data for Bald Point via a Seed grant to P. Lane. We thank Jessica Rodysill and Trevor Harrison, who participated in the post Tropical Storm Debby field survey at Bald Point. We thank the staff at the Bald Point State Park and the Florida State University Marine Lab for their assistance and hospitality.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014. The Authors.
PY - 2014/7/27
Y1 - 2014/7/27
N2 - Historical tropical cyclone (TC) and storm surge records are often too limited to quantify the risk to local populations. Paleohurricane sediment records uncover long-term TC activity, but interpreting these records can be difficult and can introduce significant uncertainties. Here we compare and combine climatological-hydrodynamic modeling (including a method to account for storm size uncertainty), historical observations, and paleohurricane records to investigate local surge risk, using Apalachee Bay in northwest Florida as an example. The modeling reveals relatively high risk, with 100 year, 500 year, and “worst case” surges estimated to be about 6.3 m, 8.3 m, and 11.3 m, respectively, at Bald Point (a paleorecord site) and about 7.4 m, 9.7 m, and 13.3 m, respectively, at St. Marks (the head of the Bay), supporting the inference from paleorecords that Apalachee Bay has frequently suffered severe inundation for thousands of years. Both the synthetic database and paleorecords contain a much higher frequency of extreme events than the historical record; the mean return period of surges greater than 5 m is about 40 years based on synthetic modeling and paleoreconstruction, whereas it is about 400 years based on historical storm analysis. Apalachee Bay surge risk is determined by storms of broad characteristics, varies spatially over the area, and is affected by coastally trapped Kelvin waves, all of which are important features to consider when accessing the risk and interpreting paleohurricane records. In particular, neglecting size uncertainty may induce great underestimation in surge risk, as the size distribution is positively skewed. While the most extreme surges were generated by the uppermost storm intensities, medium intensity storms (categories 1–3) can produce large to extreme surges, due to their larger inner core sizes. For Apalachee Bay, the storms that induced localized barrier breaching and limited sediment transport (overwash regime; surge between 3 and 5 m) are most likely to be category 2 or 3 storms, and the storms that inundated the entire barrier and deposited significantly more coarse materials (inundation regime; surge > 5 m) are most likely to be category 3 or 4 storms.
AB - Historical tropical cyclone (TC) and storm surge records are often too limited to quantify the risk to local populations. Paleohurricane sediment records uncover long-term TC activity, but interpreting these records can be difficult and can introduce significant uncertainties. Here we compare and combine climatological-hydrodynamic modeling (including a method to account for storm size uncertainty), historical observations, and paleohurricane records to investigate local surge risk, using Apalachee Bay in northwest Florida as an example. The modeling reveals relatively high risk, with 100 year, 500 year, and “worst case” surges estimated to be about 6.3 m, 8.3 m, and 11.3 m, respectively, at Bald Point (a paleorecord site) and about 7.4 m, 9.7 m, and 13.3 m, respectively, at St. Marks (the head of the Bay), supporting the inference from paleorecords that Apalachee Bay has frequently suffered severe inundation for thousands of years. Both the synthetic database and paleorecords contain a much higher frequency of extreme events than the historical record; the mean return period of surges greater than 5 m is about 40 years based on synthetic modeling and paleoreconstruction, whereas it is about 400 years based on historical storm analysis. Apalachee Bay surge risk is determined by storms of broad characteristics, varies spatially over the area, and is affected by coastally trapped Kelvin waves, all of which are important features to consider when accessing the risk and interpreting paleohurricane records. In particular, neglecting size uncertainty may induce great underestimation in surge risk, as the size distribution is positively skewed. While the most extreme surges were generated by the uppermost storm intensities, medium intensity storms (categories 1–3) can produce large to extreme surges, due to their larger inner core sizes. For Apalachee Bay, the storms that induced localized barrier breaching and limited sediment transport (overwash regime; surge between 3 and 5 m) are most likely to be category 2 or 3 storms, and the storms that inundated the entire barrier and deposited significantly more coarse materials (inundation regime; surge > 5 m) are most likely to be category 3 or 4 storms.
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U2 - 10.1002/2014JD021584
DO - 10.1002/2014JD021584
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84918499922
VL - 119
SP - 8606
EP - 8623
JO - Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
JF - Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
SN - 0148-0227
IS - 14
ER -