The Use of a Statistical Model of Storm Surge as a Bias Correction for Dynamical Surge Models and its Applicability along the U.S. East Coast

Authors

Haydee Salmun, CUNY Hunter CollegeFollow
Andrea Molod, University of Maryland

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-12-2015

Abstract

The present study extends the applicability of a statistical model for prediction of storm surge originally developed for The Battery, NY in two ways: I. the statistical model is used as a biascorrection for operationally produced dynamical surge forecasts, and II. the statistical model is applied to the region of the east coast of the U.S. susceptible to winter extratropical storms. The statistical prediction is based on a regression relation between the “storm maximum” storm surge and the storm composite significant wave height predicted ata nearby location. The use of the statistical surge prediction as an alternative bias correction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operational storm surge forecasts is shownhere to be statistically equivalent to the existing bias correctiontechnique and potentially applicable for much longer forecast lead times as well as for storm surge climate prediction. Applying the statistical model to locations along the east coast shows that the regression relation can be “trained” with data from tide gauge measurements and near-shore buoys along the coast from North Carolina to Maine, and that it provides accurate estimates of storm surge.

Comments

This article originally appeared in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, available at DOI: 10.3390/jmse3010073

© 2015 by the authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).