Simulating Hurricane Storm Surge in the Lower Mississippi River under Varying Flow Conditions
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 139, Issue 5
Abstract
Hurricanes in southeastern Louisiana develop significant surges within the lower Mississippi River. Storms with strong sustained easterly winds push water into shallow Breton Sound, overtop the river’s east bank south of Pointe à la Hache, Louisiana, penetrate into the river, and are confined by levees on the west bank. The main channel’s width and depth allow surge to propagate rapidly and efficiently up river. This work refines the high-resolution, unstructured mesh, wave current Simulating Waves Nearshore + Advanced Circulation () SL16 model to simulate river flow and hurricane-driven surge within the Mississippi River. A river velocity regime–based variation in bottom friction and a temporally variable riverine flow-driven radiation boundary condition are essential to accurately model these processes for high and/or time-varying flows. The coupled modeling system is validated for riverine flow stage relationships, flow distributions within the distributary systems, tides, and Hurricane Gustav (2008) riverine surges.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) New Orleans District (MVN) and the USACE System-Wide Water Resources and Morphos Programs. Computational resources and support were provided by the University of Texas at Austin Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). Permission to publish this paper was granted by the Chief of Engineers, USACE.
References
Ackers, P. (1993). “Stage-discharge functions for two-stage channels: The impact of new research.” J. Inst. Water Environ. Manage., 7(1), 52–61.
American Congress on Surveying and Mapping. (1992). Surveying and land information systems, Vol. 52, 133–149, 〈http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/NAVD88/navd88report.htm〉.
Arcement, G. J., and Schneider, V. R. (1989). “Guide for selecting Manning’s roughness coefficients for natural channels and flood plains.”, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.
Atkinson, J. H., Westerink, J. J., and Hervouet, J. M. (2004a). “Similarities between the quasi-bubble and the generalized wave continuity equation solutions to the shallow water equations.” Int. J. Numer. Methods Fluids, 45(7), 689–714.
Atkinson, J. H., Westerink, J. J., and Luettich, R. A. (2004b). “Two-dimensional dispersion analysis of finite element approximations to the shallow water equations.” Int. J. Numer. Methods Fluids, 45(7), 715–749.
Beven, J. L., II, and Kimberlain, T. (2009). “Tropical cyclone report, Hurricane Gustav (AL072008), 25 August–4 September, 2008.” National Hurricane Center, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, Washington, DC.
Booij, N., Ris, R. C., and Holthuijsen, L. (1999). “A third-generation wave model for coastal regions, part 1, model description and validation.” J. Geophys. Res., 104(C4), 7649–7666.
Buczkowski, B. J., Reid, J. A., Jenkins, C. J., Reid, J. M., Williams, S. J., and Flocks, J. G. (2006). “usSEABED: Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean (Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands) offshore surficial sediment data release.” U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 146, Version 1.0, 〈http://pubs.usgs.gov/ds/2006/146/〉 (Feb. 5, 2013).
Bunya, S., et al. (2010). “A high resolution coupled riverine flow, tide, wind, wind wave and storm surge model for southern Louisiana and Mississippi: Part I Model development and validation.” Mon. Weather Rev., 138(2), 345–377.
Cardone, V. J., and Cox, A. T. (2007). “Tropical cyclone wind field forcing for surge models: Critical issues and sensitivities.” Nat. Hazards, 51(1), 29–47.
Chow, V. T. (1959). Open channel hydraulics, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Cox, A. T., Greenwood, J. A., Cardone, V. J., and Swail, V. R. (1995). “An interactive objective kinematic analysis system.” Proc., 4th Int. Workshop on Wave Hindcasting and Forecasting, Atmospheric Environment Service, Banff, Alberta, Canada, 109–118.
Dawson, C., Westerink, J. J., Feyen, J. C., and Pothina, D. (2006). “Continuous, discontinuous, and coupled discontinuous-continuous Galerkin finite element methods for the shallow water equations.” Int. J. Numer. Methods Fluids, 52(1), 63–88.
Dietrich, J. C., et al. (2010). “A high resolution coupled riverine flow, tide, wind, wind wave and storm surge model for southern Louisiana and Mississippi: Part II—Synoptic description and analyses of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.” Mon. Weather Rev., 138(2), 378–404.
Dietrich, J. C., et al. (2011a). “Hurricane Gustav (2008) waves and storm surge: Hindcast, synoptic analysis and validation in southern Louisiana.” Mon. Weather Rev., 139(8), 2488–2522.
Dietrich, J. C., et al. (2011b). “Modeling hurricane waves and storm surge using integrally-coupled, scalable computations.” Coastal Eng., 58(1), 45–65.
Dietrich, J. C., et al. (2012). “Performance of the unstructured-mesh, SWAN+ADCIRC model in computing hurricane waves and surge.” J. Sci. Comput., 52(2), 468–497.
Egbert, G. D., and Erofeeva, S. Y. (2002). “Efficient inverse modeling of barotropic ocean tides.” J. Atmos. Oceanic Techno., 19(2), 183–204.
Forbes, C., Luettich, R. A., Mattocks, C. A., and Westerink, J. J. (2010). “A retrospective evaluation of the storm surge produced by Hurricane Gustav (2008): Forecast and hindcast results.” Weather Forecast., 25(6), 1577–1602.
Hanson, J. L., Tracy, B. A., Tolman, H. L., and Scott, R. D. (2009). “Pacific hindcast performance of three numerical wave models.” J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 26(8), 1614–1633.
Hoyt, J., and Grover, N. C. (1912). River discharge, 2nd Ed., Wiley, New York.
Kubatko, E. J., Bunya, S., Dawson, C., Westerink, J. J., and Mirabito, C. (2009). “A performance comparison of continuous and discontinuous finite element shallow water models.” J. Sci. Comput., 40(1–3), 315–339.
Le Provost, C., Lyard, F., Molines, J. M., Genco, M. L., and Rabilloud, F. (1998). “A hydrodynamic ocean tide model improved by satellite altimeter-derived data set.” J. Geophys. Res., 103(C3), 5513–5529.
Luettich, R. A., and Westerink, J. J. (2004). “Formulation and numerical implementation of 2D/3D ADCIRC finite element model version 44.XX.” 〈http://www.adcirc.org/adcirc_theory_2004_12_08.pdf〉 (Feb. 5, 2013).
Mukai, A., Westerink, J. J., Luettich, R. A., and Mark, D. J. (2001). “Guidelines for using the East Coast 2001 database of tidal constituents within the western North Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea.” Coastal and Hydraulic Engineering Technical Note, U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, MS.
Paarlberg, A., Dohmen-Janssen, C. M., Hulsher, S. J. M. H., Termes, P., and Schielen, R. (2010). “Modeling the effect of time-dependent river dune evolution on bed roughness and stage.” Earth Surf. Processes Landforms, 35(15), 1854–1866.
Powell, M. D., Houston, S., Amat, L., and Morrisseau-Leroy, N. (1998). “The HRD real-time hurricane wind analysis system.” J. Wind Eng. Ind. Aerodyn., 77–78(1), 53–64.
Powell, M. D., Houston, S., and Reinhold, T. (1996). “Hurricane Andrew’s landfall in South Florida. Part I: Standardizing measurements for documentation of surface wind fields.” Weather Forecast., 11(3), 304–328.
Resio, D. T., and Westerink, J. J. (2008). “Modeling the physics of storm surges.” Phys. Today, 61(9), 33–38.
Ris, R. C., and Holthuijsen, L. H. (1999). “Spectral modelling of current induced wave-blocking.” Proc., 25th Int. Conf. on Coastal Engineering, ASCE, New York, 1247–1254.
Sanchez-Rubio, G., Perry, H. M., Biesot, P. M., Johnson, D. R., and Lipcius, R. N. (2011). “Oceanic-atmospheric modes of variability and their influence on riverine input to coastal Louisiana and Mississippi.” J. Hydrol., 396(1–2), 72–81.
Tanaka, S., Bunya, S., Westerink, J. J., Dawson, C., and Luettich, R. A. (2011). “Scalability of an unstructured grid continuous Galerkin based hurricane storm surge model.” J. Sci. Comput., 46(3), 329–358.
van Rijn, L. C. (2007). “Unified view of sediment transport by currents and waves. III: Graded beds.” J. Hydraul. Eng.,133(7), 761–775.
Walker, N. D., Wiseman, W. J., Jr., Rouse, L. J., Jr., and Babin, A. (2005). “Effects of river discharge, wind stress, and slope eddies on circulation and the satellite-observed structure of the Mississippi River plume.” J. Coastal Res., 21(6), 1228–1244.
Warner, J. C., Sherwood, C. R., Signell, R. P., Harris, C. K., and Arango, H. G. (2008). “Development of a three-dimensional, regional, coupled wave, current, and sediment-transport model.” Comput. Geosci., 34(10), 1284–1306.
Westerink, J. J., et al. (2008). “A basin to channel scale unstructured grid hurricane storm surge model applied to southern Louisiana.” Mon. Weather Rev., 136(3), 833–864.
Westphal, J., Thompson, D. B., Stevens, G. T., and Strauser, C. N. (1999). “Stage-discharge relationships on the middle Mississippi River.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage., 125(1), 48–53.
Zijlema, M. (2010). “Computation of wind-wave spectra in coastal waters with SWAN on unstructured grids.” Coastal Eng., 57(3), 267–277.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 139 • Issue 5 • May 2013
Pages: 492 - 501
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 6, 2011
Accepted: Nov 2, 2012
Published online: Nov 5, 2012
Published in print: May 1, 2013
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.