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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Article
Saco-Casco Bays Inundation Modeling of Five Winter Storms
Author(s)
Saswati Deb1, Huijie Xue2, and Shivanesh Rao3
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5879/2021.02.001
Affiliation(s)
1. Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Gulf Fisheries Centre, New Brunswick, Canada
2. School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine, Maine, USA
3. School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia
ABSTRACT
Coastal inundation along the northeast coast of the United States is usually caused by strong winter storms (WS). However, the accurate prediction of coastal inundation due to the WS is challenging. Therefore, our study aims to develop a unique high-resolution modeling system to accurately predict the coastal inundation in the ungauged coastal areas of Saco-Casco Bays and map the flood risk zones to potential sea level rise due to these storms. Hindcasts of five classic WS in 2014-2015 were studied. The inundation models are based on FVCOM that uses unstructured grid to capture the minor to significant flooding near the shallow areas of the bays, harbor entrance and river banks. In this study, topography has been generated from the NOAA’s integrated dataset of Portland, ME 1/3 arc-second MHW digital elevation model. The model runs were driven by two different sets of meteorological (NECOFS WRF and NOAA’s NAM WRF) forcing to examine the effect of spatial resolution on the predicted inundation. The study reveals that among the five storm surge cases, WS-III produces a maximum surge of 0.7 m and WS-II cause a minimum surge of 0.3 m. In all scenarios, southward wind-driven coastal current flowing towards Biddeford Pool, Pine Point and Camp Ellis forms a small-scale eddy which causes significant inundation however strength of the current varies accordingly. Sensitivity experiments have been carried out using NECOFS WRF simulation products with varying parameters of marshland elevation and bottom friction to understand the influence of intertidal storage on the predicted flooding.
KEYWORDS
Coastal inundation, winter storms, Saco-Casco Bays, FVCOM, NECOFS WRF.
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