Hydrodynamic modeling of Delaware Bay with applications to storm surges and coastal flooding: current conditions and future scenarios
Date
2016
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This study is aimed at better understanding storm surges and associated flooding at Delaware Bay coastal regions, considering present day sea levels and future sea level rise. To simulate realistic storm surges we employ a nested regional hydrodynamic modeling approach. An established regional model (RM) for the Delaware Bay and its adjacent coastal shelf is first forced at its lateral boundaries with realistic water levels and depth averaged currents. Imposing this remote forcing in the RM is critical for accurately modeling the timing and magnitude of the storm surge. Then we use water levels and currents from the RM to drive a high resolution local model, with horizontal resolution down to 10 m, for a region close to Bowers, Delaware, that is susceptible to coastal flooding. As a test case we apply this modeling framework for Hurricane Sandy (2012). To investigate the influence of sea level rise on future storm surge events, we consider three different sea level rise scenarios assuming present-day bathymetry and topography. To analyze the impact of a storm surge like the generated by Hurricane Sandy, we added the sea level rise suggested in each scenario to the mean sea level of our simulation. The wind forcing was the same in all scenarios. These scenarios showed that even a SLR of 0.5 m could turn South Bowers into a tidally inundated area with the rest of the town being very susceptible to storm surges, while in the worst case scenario, a part of the town would be permanently under water and the rest of it would be inundated daily, forcing the whole town to be moved.
Description
Keywords
Applied sciences, Health and environmental sciences, Earth sciences, Boundary forcing, Delaware Bay, Flooding, Numerical modeling, Sea level rise, Storm surge