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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Impacts Of A Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake On Water Levels And Wetlands Of The Lower Columbia River And Estuary, M. W. Brand, Heida Diefenderfer, J. E. O’Connor, Amy B. Borde, D. A. Jay, Aqeel Al-Bahadily, M. Mckeon, S. A. Talke Jun 2023

Impacts Of A Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake On Water Levels And Wetlands Of The Lower Columbia River And Estuary, M. W. Brand, Heida Diefenderfer, J. E. O’Connor, Amy B. Borde, D. A. Jay, Aqeel Al-Bahadily, M. Mckeon, S. A. Talke

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Subsidence after a subduction zone earthquake can cause major changes in estuarine bathymetry. Here, we quantify the impacts of earthquake-induced subsidence on hydrodynamics and habitat distributions in a major system, the lower Columbia River Estuary, using a hydrodynamic and habitat model. Model results indicate that coseismic subsidence increases tidal range, with the smallest changes at the coast and a maximum increase of ∼10% in a region of topographic convergence. All modeled scenarios reduce intertidal habitat by 24%–25% and shifts ∼93% of estuarine wetlands to lower-elevation habitat bands. Incorporating dynamic effects of tidal change from subsidence yields higher estimates of remaining …


Global Water Level Variability Observed After The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’Apai Volcanic Tsunami Of 2022, Adam Thomas Devlin, David A. Jay, Stefan Talke, Jiayi Pan Apr 2023

Global Water Level Variability Observed After The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’Apai Volcanic Tsunami Of 2022, Adam Thomas Devlin, David A. Jay, Stefan Talke, Jiayi Pan

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano on 15 January 2022 provided a rare opportunity to understand global tsunami impacts of explosive volcanism and to evaluate future hazards, including dangers from “volcanic meteotsunamis” (VMTs) induced by the atmospheric shock waves that followed the eruption. The propagation of the volcanic and marine tsunamis was analyzed using globally distributed 1 min measurements of air pressure and water level (WL) (from both tide gauges and deep-water buoys). The marine tsunami propagated primarily throughout the Pacific, reaching nearly 2 m at some locations, though most Pacific locations recorded maximums lower than 1 m. …


Compound Flooding In Convergent Estuaries: Insights From An Analytical Model, Ramin Familkhalili, Stefan A. Talke, David A. Jay Jan 2022

Compound Flooding In Convergent Estuaries: Insights From An Analytical Model, Ramin Familkhalili, Stefan A. Talke, David A. Jay

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

We investigate here the effects of geometric properties (channel depth and cross-sectional convergence length), storm surge characteristics, friction, and river flow on the spatial and temporal variability of compound flooding along an idealized, meso-tidal coastal-plain estuary. An analytical model is developed that includes exponentially convergent geometry, tidal forcing, constant river flow, and a representation of storm surge as a combination of two sinusoidal waves. Nonlinear bed friction is treated using Chebyshev polynomials and trigonometric functions, and a multisegment approach is used to increase accuracy. Model results show that river discharge increases the damping of surge amplitudes in an estuary, while …


The Influence Of Channel Deepening On Tides, River Discharge Effects, And Storm Surge, Stefan A. Talke, Ramin Familkhalili, David A. Jay Apr 2021

The Influence Of Channel Deepening On Tides, River Discharge Effects, And Storm Surge, Stefan A. Talke, Ramin Familkhalili, David A. Jay

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

We combine archival research, semi-analytical models, and numerical simulations to address the following question: how do changes to channel geometry alter tidal properties and flood dynamics in a hyposynchronous, strongly frictional estuary with a landward decay in tidal amplitudes? Records in the Saint Johns River Estuary since the 1890s show that tidal range has doubled in Jacksonville, Florida. Near the estuary inlet, tidal discharge approximately doubled but tidal amplitudes increased only ~6%. Modeling shows that increased shipping channel depths from 5-6 to ~13m drove the observed changes, with other factors like channel shortening and width reduction producing comparatively minor effects. …


Evolving Tides Aggravate Nuisance Flooding Along The U.S. Coastline., Sida Li, Thomas Wahl, Stefan A. Talke, David A. Jay, Philip M. Orton, Xinghui Liang, Guocheng Wang, Lintao Liu Mar 2021

Evolving Tides Aggravate Nuisance Flooding Along The U.S. Coastline., Sida Li, Thomas Wahl, Stefan A. Talke, David A. Jay, Philip M. Orton, Xinghui Liang, Guocheng Wang, Lintao Liu

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nuisance flooding (NF) is defined as minor, nondestructive flooding that causes substantial, accumulating socioeconomic impacts to coastal communities. While sea-level rise is the main driver for the observed increase in NF events in the United States, we show here that secular changes in tides also contribute. An analysis of 40 tidal gauge records from U.S. coasts finds that, at 18 locations, NF increased due to tidal amplification, while decreases in tidal range suppressed NF at 11 locations. Estuaries show the largest changes in NF attributable to tide changes, and these can often be traced to anthropogenic alterations. Limited long-term measurements …


Tide-Storm Surge Interactions In Highly Altered Estuaries: How Channel Deepening Increases Surge Vulnerability, Ramin Familkhalili, Stefan A. Talke, David A. Jay Jan 2020

Tide-Storm Surge Interactions In Highly Altered Estuaries: How Channel Deepening Increases Surge Vulnerability, Ramin Familkhalili, Stefan A. Talke, David A. Jay

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

We develop idealized analytical and numerical models to study how storm surge amplitudes vary within frictional, weakly convergent, nonreflective estuaries. Friction is treated using Chebyshev polynomials. Storm surge is represented as the sum of two sinusoidal components, and a third constituent represents the semidiurnal tide (D2). An empirical fit of storm surge shows that two sinusoidal components adequately represent storm surge above a baseline value (R2 = 0.97). We find that the spatial transformation of surge amplitudes depends on the depth of the estuary, and characteristics of the surge wave including time scale, amplitude, asymmetry, and surge‐tide relative phase. Analytical …


Seasonality Of Tides In Southeast Asian Waters, Adam T. Devlin, Edward Zaron, David A. Jay, Stefan Talke May 2018

Seasonality Of Tides In Southeast Asian Waters, Adam T. Devlin, Edward Zaron, David A. Jay, Stefan Talke

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

An analysis of water level time series from 20 tide gauges in Southeast Asia finds that diurnal and semidiurnal astronomical tides exhibit strong seasonal variability of both amplitude and phase, which is not caused by known modulations of the astronomical tide-generating forces. Instead, it is found that the tidal properties are coherent with the western North Pacific monsoon index (WNPMI), indicating that monsoonal mechanisms are the likely cause. The study domain includes the Malacca Strait, Gulf of Thailand, the southern South China Sea, and Java Sea. The character of the geography and the tidal variability is different in each of …


Archival Water-Level Measurements: Recovering Historical Data To Help Design For The Future, Stefan A. Talke, David A. Jay Aug 2017

Archival Water-Level Measurements: Recovering Historical Data To Help Design For The Future, Stefan A. Talke, David A. Jay

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Improving methods of assessing risk and designing structures to withstand extreme events and changing sea levels is a vital component of strategies for reducing risk to coastal resources and assets. An obvious approach to improving the statistical robustness of risk assessments is to increase the number, time span, and quality of available water-level data sets, and to assess trends and non-stationarity. In this report we discuss efforts to recover, digitize, and analyze hundreds of station-years of lost-and-forgotten tide data and other water-level measurements that extend back to the early 19th century. To date, more than 6,500 station-years of previously lost …


Relative Sea-Level Trends In New York City During The Past 1500 Years, Andrew C. Kemp, Troy D. Hill, Christopher H. Vane, Niamh Cahill, Philip M. Orton, Stefan A. Talke, Andrew C. Parnell, Kelsey Sanborn, Ellen K. Hartig Jan 2017

Relative Sea-Level Trends In New York City During The Past 1500 Years, Andrew C. Kemp, Troy D. Hill, Christopher H. Vane, Niamh Cahill, Philip M. Orton, Stefan A. Talke, Andrew C. Parnell, Kelsey Sanborn, Ellen K. Hartig

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

New York City (NYC) is threatened by 21st-century relative sea-level (RSL) rise because it will experience a trend that exceeds the global mean and has high concentrations of low-lying infrastructure and socioeconomic activity. To provide a long-term context for anticipated trends, we reconstructed RSL change during the past ~1500 years using a core of salt-marsh sediment from Pelham Bay in The Bronx. Foraminifera and bulk-sediment δ13C values were used as sea-level indicators. The history of sediment accumulation was established by radiocarbon dating and recognition of pollution and land-use trends of known age in down-core elemental, isotopic, and pollen …


Coupling Of Sea Level And Tidal Range Changes, With Implications For Future Water Levels, Adam T. Devlin, David A. Jay, Stefan Talke, Edward D. Zaron, Jiayi Pan, Hui Lin Jan 2017

Coupling Of Sea Level And Tidal Range Changes, With Implications For Future Water Levels, Adam T. Devlin, David A. Jay, Stefan Talke, Edward D. Zaron, Jiayi Pan, Hui Lin

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Are perturbations to ocean tides correlated with changing sea-level and climate, and how will this affect high water levels? Here, we survey 152 tide gauges in the Pacific Ocean and South China Sea and statistically evaluate how the sum of the four largest tidal constituents, a proxy for the highest astronomical tide (HAT), changes over seasonal and interannual time scales. We find that the variability in HAT is significantly correlated with sea-level variability; approximately 35% of stations exhibit a greater than ±50 mm tidal change per meter sea-level fluctuation. Focusing on a subset of three stations with long records, probability …


A Validated Tropical-Extratropical Flood Hazard Assessment For New York Harbor, Philip M. Orton, T. M. Hall, Stefan A. Talke, Alan F. Blumberg, Nickitas Georgas, S. Vinogradov Dec 2016

A Validated Tropical-Extratropical Flood Hazard Assessment For New York Harbor, Philip M. Orton, T. M. Hall, Stefan A. Talke, Alan F. Blumberg, Nickitas Georgas, S. Vinogradov

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent studies of flood risk at New York Harbor (NYH) have shown disparate results for the 100 year storm tide, providing an uncertain foundation for the flood mitigation response after Hurricane Sandy. Here we present a flood hazard assessment that improves confidence in our understanding of the region's present-day potential for flooding, by separately including the contribution of tropical cyclones (TCs) and extratropical cyclones (ETCs), and validating our modeling study at multiple stages against historical observations. The TC assessment is based on a climatology of 606 synthetic storms developed from a statistical-stochastic model of North Atlantic TCs. The ETC assessment …


Tidal River Dynamics: Implications For Deltas, Ton Hoitink, David A. Jay May 2016

Tidal River Dynamics: Implications For Deltas, Ton Hoitink, David A. Jay

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Tidal rivers are a vital and little studied nexus between physical oceanography and hydrology. It is only in the last few decades that substantial research efforts have been focused on the interactions of river discharge with tidal waves and storm surges into regions beyond the limit of salinity intrusion, a realm that can extend inland hundreds of kilometers. One key phenomenon resulting from this interaction is the emergence of large fortnightly tides, which are forced long waves with amplitudes that may increase beyond the point where astronomical tides have become extinct. These can be larger than the linear tide itself …


Recent Progress In Performance Evaluations And Near Real-Time Assessment Of Operational Ocean Products, Fabrice Hernandez, Edward Blockley, Gary B. Brassington, Fraser Davidson, Prasanth Divakaran, Marie Drévillon, Shiro Ishizaki, Marcos Garcia-Sotillo, Patrick J. Hogan, Priidik Lagemaa, Bruno Levier, Matthew Martin, Avichal Mehra, Christopher Mooers, Nicolas Ferry, Andrew Ryan, Charly Regnier, Alistair Sellar, Gregory C. Smith, Sarantis Sofianos, Todd Spindler, Gianluca Volpe, John Wilkin, Edward Zaron, Aijun Zhang Oct 2015

Recent Progress In Performance Evaluations And Near Real-Time Assessment Of Operational Ocean Products, Fabrice Hernandez, Edward Blockley, Gary B. Brassington, Fraser Davidson, Prasanth Divakaran, Marie Drévillon, Shiro Ishizaki, Marcos Garcia-Sotillo, Patrick J. Hogan, Priidik Lagemaa, Bruno Levier, Matthew Martin, Avichal Mehra, Christopher Mooers, Nicolas Ferry, Andrew Ryan, Charly Regnier, Alistair Sellar, Gregory C. Smith, Sarantis Sofianos, Todd Spindler, Gianluca Volpe, John Wilkin, Edward Zaron, Aijun Zhang

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Operational ocean forecast systems provide routine marine products to an ever-widening community of users and stakeholders. The majority of users need information about the quality and reliability of the products to exploit them fully. Hence, forecast centres have been developing improved methods for evaluating and communicating the quality of their products. Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE) OceanView, along with the Copernicus European Marine Core Service and other national and international programmes, has facilitated the development of coordinated validation activities among these centres. New metrics, assessing a wider range of ocean parameters, have been defined and implemented in real-time. An …


Channel Shallowing As Mitigation Of Coastal Flooding, Philip M. Orton, Stefan A. Talke, David A. Jay, Larry Yin, Alan F. Blumberg, Nickitas Georgas, Haihong Zhao, Hugh J. Roberts, Kytt Macmanus Jul 2015

Channel Shallowing As Mitigation Of Coastal Flooding, Philip M. Orton, Stefan A. Talke, David A. Jay, Larry Yin, Alan F. Blumberg, Nickitas Georgas, Haihong Zhao, Hugh J. Roberts, Kytt Macmanus

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Here, we demonstrate that reductions in the depth of inlets or estuary channels can be used to reduce or prevent coastal flooding. A validated hydrodynamic model of Jamaica Bay, New York City (NYC), is used to test nature-based adaptation measures in ameliorating flooding for NYC’s two largest historical coastal flood events. In addition to control runs with modern bathymetry, three altered landscape scenarios are tested: (1) increasing the area of wetlands to their 1879 footprint and bathymetry, but leaving deep shipping channels unaltered; (2) shallowing all areas deeper than 2 m in the bay to be 2 m below Mean …


Can Tidal Perturbations Associated With Sea Level Variations In The Western Pacific Ocean Be Used To Understand Future Effects Of Tidal Evolution?, Adam T. Devlin, David A. Jay, Stefan A. Talke, Edward D. Zaron Aug 2014

Can Tidal Perturbations Associated With Sea Level Variations In The Western Pacific Ocean Be Used To Understand Future Effects Of Tidal Evolution?, Adam T. Devlin, David A. Jay, Stefan A. Talke, Edward D. Zaron

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study examines connections between mean sea level (MSL) variability and diurnal and semidiurnal tidal constituent variations at 17 open-ocean and 9 continental shelf tide gauges in the western tropical Pacific Ocean, a region showing anomalous rise in MSL over the last 20 years and strong interannual variability. Detrended MSL fluctuations are correlated with detrended tidal amplitude and phase fluctuations, defined as tidal anomaly trends (TATs), to quantify the response of tidal properties to MSL variation. About 20 significant amplitude and phase TATs are found for each of the two strongest tidal constituents, K1 (diurnal) and M2 (semidiurnal). …


An Analysis Of Secular Change In Tides At Open-Ocean Sites In The Pacific, Edward D. Zaron, David A. Jay Jul 2014

An Analysis Of Secular Change In Tides At Open-Ocean Sites In The Pacific, Edward D. Zaron, David A. Jay

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Hourly sea level is examined at 25 open-ocean stations in the Pacific Ocean with records longer than 30 yr. A search for trends finds that the amplitude of the dominant semidiurnal tide M2 is increasing at 12 of the 13 sites where a statistically significant trend can be identified. It is also found that nontidal variance in the neighborhood of M2 is decreasing at all 12 of the sites where a significant increase in M2 tide is occurring. The trend in amplitude of the dominant diurnal tide K1 is significant at six stations, and it is …


Increasing Storm Tides In New York Harbor, 1844–2013, Stefan A. Talke, Philip M. Orton, David A. Jay May 2014

Increasing Storm Tides In New York Harbor, 1844–2013, Stefan A. Talke, Philip M. Orton, David A. Jay

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Three of the nine highest recorded water levels in the New York Harbor region have occurred since 2010 (March 2010, August 2011, and October 2012), and eight of the largest twenty have occurred since 1990. To investigate whether this cluster of high waters is a random occurrence or indicative of intensified storm tides, we recover archival tide gauge data back to 1844 and evaluate the trajectory of the annual maximum storm tide. Approximately half of long-term variance is anticorrelated with decadal-scale variations in the North Atlantic Oscillation, while long-term trends explain the remainder. The 10 year storm tide has increased …


Time-Variable Refraction Of The Internal Tide At The Hawaiian Ridge, Edward D. Zaron, Gary D. Egbert Feb 2014

Time-Variable Refraction Of The Internal Tide At The Hawaiian Ridge, Edward D. Zaron, Gary D. Egbert

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The interaction of the dominant semidiurnal M2 internal tide with the large-scale subtidal flow is examined in an ocean model by propagating the tide through an ensemble of background fields in a domain centered on the Hawaiian Ridge. The background fields are taken from the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA) ocean analysis, at 2-month intervals from 1992 through 2001. Tides are computed with the Primitive Equation Z-coordinate Harmonic Analysis of Tides (PEZ-HAT) model by 14-day integrations using SODA initial conditions and M2 tidal forcing. Variability of the tide is found to occur primarily as the result of propagation through …


Adaptation Of Classical Tidal Harmonic Analysis To Nonstationary Tides, With Application To River Tides, Pascal Matte, David A. Jay, Edward D. Zaron Mar 2013

Adaptation Of Classical Tidal Harmonic Analysis To Nonstationary Tides, With Application To River Tides, Pascal Matte, David A. Jay, Edward D. Zaron

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

One of the most challenging areas in tidal analysis is the study of nonstationary signals with a tidal component, as they confront both current analysis methods and dynamical understanding. A new analysis tool has been developed, NS_TIDE, adapted to the study of nonstationary signals, in this case, river tides. It builds the nonstationary forcing directly into the tidal basis functions. It is implemented by modification of T_TIDE; however, certain concepts, particularly the meaning of a constituent and the Rayleigh criterion, are redefined to account for the smearing effects on the tidal spectral lines by nontidal energy. An error estimation procedure …


The Inverse Ocean Modeling System. Part Ii: Applications, J. C. Muccino, H. G. Arango, Andrew F. Bennett, B. S. Chua, Julia Muccino Cornuelle, E. Di Lorenzo, Gary D. Egbert, D. Haidvogel, J. C. Levin, H. Luo, A. J. Miller, A. M. Moore, Edward D. Zaron Sep 2008

The Inverse Ocean Modeling System. Part Ii: Applications, J. C. Muccino, H. G. Arango, Andrew F. Bennett, B. S. Chua, Julia Muccino Cornuelle, E. Di Lorenzo, Gary D. Egbert, D. Haidvogel, J. C. Levin, H. Luo, A. J. Miller, A. M. Moore, Edward D. Zaron

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Inverse Ocean Modeling (IOM) System is a modular system for constructing and running weak-constraint four-dimensional variational data assimilation (W4DVAR) for any linear or nonlinear functionally smooth dynamical model and observing array. The IOM has been applied to four ocean models with widely varying characteristics. The Primitive Equations Z-coordinate-Harmonic Analysis of Tides (PEZ-HAT) and the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) are three-dimensional, primitive equations models while the Advanced Circulation model in 2D (ADCIRC-2D) and Spectral Element Ocean Model in 2D (SEOM-2D) are shallow-water models belonging to the general finite-element family. These models, in conjunction with the IOM, have been used …


Analyzing Dynamic Characteristics Of Internal Solitons Generated At The Columbia River Plume Front With Sar Images, David A. Jay, Jiayi Pan, R. D. Brodeur Feb 2006

Analyzing Dynamic Characteristics Of Internal Solitons Generated At The Columbia River Plume Front With Sar Images, David A. Jay, Jiayi Pan, R. D. Brodeur

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Columbia River plume transports dissolved and particulate load, phyto- and zooplankton,and larvae across the shelf. It also facilitates primary production and influences food-web structure through its supply of silicate and micronutrients. Small-scale phenomena such as plume fronts and internal waves generated by the plume can greatly affect vertical mixing between the plume and ocean waters. Internal waves that are generated at the front of the river plume and propagate off shoreward [Nash and Moum 2005; Orton and Jay 2005] both cause mixing and transport plume water into the adjacent coastal ocean. We use Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images and …


Particle Trapping In Estuarine Tidal Flows, David A. Jay, Jeffery D. Musiak Oct 1994

Particle Trapping In Estuarine Tidal Flows, David A. Jay, Jeffery D. Musiak

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Particle trapping in estuarine turbidity maxima (ETM) is caused primarily by convergent mean and/or tidal fluxes of sediment. The result is an approximately bell-shaped along-channel distribution of vertically integrated, tidal cycle mean suspended sediment concentration. Observations from the Columbia River estuary suggest that (1) strong two-layer or internal along-channel residual and overtide flows are generated by time-varying stratification and (2) correlations between the near-bed velocity and the suspended sediment fields at these frequencies are important in landward transport of sediment. A new spatially and temporally integrated form of the sediment conservation equation has been derived to analyze this trapping process. …