Hindcasting of Wind, Storm Surge, and Waves from Hurricane Sandy (2012) Using an Integrated Coastal and Ocean Process Model

Hurricane Sandy in late October 2012 battered the U.S. east coast, including New York and the low-lying areas in New Jersey, due to inundation and coastal erosion driven by storm surges and waves. It was the deadliest and most destructive hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, and the second-costliest hurricane in United States history. In the study, the storm surges and waves driven by Hurricane Sandy (2012) were computed by using an integrated coastal and ocean process model, CCHE2D-Coast. The surface wind and air pressure fields of the cyclone were reconstructed by a parametrical cyclonic wind model, which was developed to include the decay effect of hurricane landfall. The simulated wind, wave, and water elevations were compared with the observation data by NOAA and USGS. This preliminary numerical result indicates that this coast-ocean model reproduced well the storm surge tides and waves in the entire east coast of the U.S. All the computations were accomplished on a PC with reasonable CPU hours, which made large-scale storm-surge modeling convenient, efficient, and economic.