Method for Estimating Future Hurricane Flood Probabilities and Associated Uncertainty
Publication: Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering
Volume 139, Issue 2
Abstract
Reliable hurricane flood probability estimates are essential for effective management and engineering in the coastal environment. However, uncertainty in future climate conditions presents a challenge for assessing future flood probabilities. Studies suggest that in the future, sea-level rise may accelerate, and hurricanes may intensify and occur less or more often. Here, methods are presented for incorporating sea-level rise and future hurricane conditions into extreme-value flood statistics analysis. By considering an idealized coast, surge response functions are used with joint probability statistics to define time-varying continuous probability mass functions for hurricane flood elevation. Uncertainty in the flood estimates introduced by uncertainty in future climate is quantified by considering variance in future climate and sea level projections. It will be shown that future global warming can increase the flood elevation at a given return period by 1–3% per decade, but that climate-related uncertainty only marginally contributes to the overall uncertainty associated with hurricane flood statistics. Finally, it will be demonstrated that adaptive management practices are the most effective means of optimizing future coastal engineering activities in the face of climate change.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Dr. Thomas R. Knutson (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for helping to interpret future climate trends for this study and Mr. Joel Smith (Stratus Consulting) for providing MAGICC/SCENGEN simulation results. This material is based on work supported by the Office of Science (BER) U.S. Department of Energy (Grant No. DE-FG02-08ER64644), the National Sea Grant College Program of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Grant No. NA10OAR4170099), and the South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (Grant No. 24036078). The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of any of these organizations.
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Published In
Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering
Volume 139 • Issue 2 • March 2013
Pages: 126 - 134
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 16, 2011
Accepted: Apr 18, 2012
Published online: Apr 20, 2012
Published in print: Mar 1, 2013
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