RT journal article
T1 Towards robust pan-European storm surge forecasting
A1 Fernández Momblant, Tomás
A1 Vousdoukas, Michalis Ioannis
A1 Ciavola, Paolo
A1 Voukouvalas, Evangelos
A1 Mentaschi, Lorenzo
A1 Breyiannis, George
A1 Feyen, Luc
A1 Salomon, Peter
A2 Ciencias de la Tierra
K1 Storm surge
K1 Operational forecasting
K1 Coastal flooding
K1 Marine storms
K1 Natural hazards
K1 Numerical modelling
AB Operational forecasting systems are important for disaster risk reduction. In this work we implement a coupled storm surge and tidal model on an unstructured grid over Europe towards the development of a pan-European Storm Surge Forecasting System (EU-SSF). The skill to predict tidal, surge and total water levels was evaluated based on measurements from 208 tidal gauge stations. Results show satisfactory performance for the two atmospheric forcing datasets tested, a High Resolution Forecast and ERA-INTERIM reanalysis, both provided by the European Center for Medium range Weather Forecast. For tidal predictions, the total RSS is equal to 0.197 m, lower than the values estimated by the global tidal model FES2004, and outperformed only by FES2012 (RSS = 0.05 m), which however is a product of data assimilation. Storm surge validation results show good predictive skill, with 0.04 m < RMSE < 0.21 m and %RMSE within 4%–22%. Coupling with tides results in improved storm surge level predictions, with RMSE reducing by up to 0.033 m. The areas benefiting most from the coupling are the North Sea and the English Channel, resulting in up to 2% reduction of the %RMSE. Increasing the resolution of atmospheric forcing also improves the predictive skill, leading to a reduction of RMSE up to 0.06 m in terms of the extremes, especially in shallow areas where wind is the main driver for surge production. We propose a setup for operational pan-European storm surge forecasting combining tidal levels from the FES2012 model and storm surge residuals from the EU-SSF setup which couples meteorological and astronomic tides.
PB Elsevier
SN 1463-5003
YR 2019
FD 2019
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/34386
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/34386
LA eng
NO European Union
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 10-may-2026