STORM SURGE MODELING AND FORECAST FOR THE SOUTH-WESTERN ATLANTIC OCEAN
Ricardo de Camargo1, Joseph Harari2 and Pedro L.S. Dias1
1Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics of University of São Paulo.
2Department of Physical Oceanography, Institute of Oceanography of University of São Paulo.
Presented by IGOR G. PACCA
Storm surges over the Atlantic Coast of South America have important effects in terms of coastal erosion, sediment dynamics and harbor activities, among many others. The aim of this project is to present a numerical system for storm surge forecasts in the South-Western Atlantic Ocean, basically from the northern Argentinean shelf (42ºS) to the Rio de Janeiro coast (21ºS), hereafter called SWAO region. The idealized system would be able to provide disturbances in the surface elevation and shelf currents fields related to the passage of meteorological systems over the studied area. It is very important to mention the cyclogenetic characteristics of the region of interest, which play an important role for storm surge events.
Mesoscale meteorological forecasts for the study area can be supplied by operational runs of the Regional Atmospheric Modelling Systems (RAMS) at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences of University of São Paulo. The model assimilates large scale analysed and predicted fields provided by global models (normally NCEP and CPTEC, and occasionally ECMWF) and improves the forecast considering regional aspects in a 32km grid.
The oceanic part of the proposed system is based on the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) simulations for the SWAO area with approximately 10km resolution, which will be forced by predicted wind fields provided by RAMS as described above. The use of mesoscale wind fields in previous hindcasting simulations shown better results in comparison to wind fields directly from global models.
( November 19, 1999 ) .
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
07 Aug 2000 -
Date of issue
June 2000
