Increased extreme coastal water levels due to the combined action of storm surges and wind waves

The dependence between extreme storm surges and wind waves is assessed statistically along the global coasts using the outputs of two numerical models consistently forced with the same atmospheric fields. We show that 55% of the world coastlines face compound storm surge wave extremes. Hence, for a...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Marcos, Marta, Rohmer, Jérémy, Vousdoukas, Michalis I., Mentaschi, Lorenzo, Cozannet, Gonéri, Amores, Ángel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/202987
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/202987
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:sea level extremes
storm surges
wind waves
compound events
Coastal flooding
Descripción
Sumario:The dependence between extreme storm surges and wind waves is assessed statistically along the global coasts using the outputs of two numerical models consistently forced with the same atmospheric fields. We show that 55% of the world coastlines face compound storm surge wave extremes. Hence, for a given level of probability, neglecting these dependencies leads to underestimating extreme coastal water levels. Dependencies are dominant in midlatitudes and are likely underestimated in the tropics due to limited representation of tropical cyclones. Furthermore, we show that in half of the areas with dependence, the estimated probability of occurrence of coastal extreme water levels increases significantly when it is accounted for. Translated in terms of return periods, this means that along 30% of global coastlines, extreme water levels expected at most once in a century without considering dependence between storm surges and waves become a 1 in 50-year event.