Funded Title:

1. The Title Slide.. Funded Title: Super-Regional Testbed to Improve Models of Environmental Processes for the US Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Coasts Translated Title: Make Computer Models that Simulate Processes in Coastal Waters Easier to Use. NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

2. What is it? U.S. IOOS/NOS/SURA Partnership $4 million, 1 year Improve models that forecast coastal flooding and hypoxia. 64 folks, 20 Universities, 2 Companies. Standardize Research to Ops NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

3. Testbed Teams NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

4. Inundation • BIO – Will Perrie, Bash Toualney, Fumin Xu • LSU – Chunyan Li • NOAA – Jesse Feyen, Jamie Rhome, Cristina Forbes, Amy Haase, Anne Kramer • RENCI – Howard Lander • SURA – Gary Crane, Linda Akali • USF – Lianyuan Zheng, Bob Weisberg • UF – Don Slinn, Justin Davis (CI) • UMassD – Changsheng Chen, Qichun Xu • USACE – Jeff Hanson • UND – Joannes Westerink, Aaron Donahue, Corbitt Kerr • VIMS – Harry Wang, David Forrest (CI) • WHOI – Bob Beardsley • Others…………………… NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

5. Waves + Tides + Barometric Pressure Tropical & Extra Tropical Atlantic & Gulf Coasts High Water Marks Coastal Inundation Scituate Harbor, MA Cameron, LA NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

6. Outcomes and Scientific Insights Gained • Customization of IMEDS for use by the surge, waves & inundation team • Compare SLOSH results with other models w/ same meteorological forcing • Established a SURA testbed server for data archiving and exchange. • SURA server populated with grids, forcing and obs for model evaluation. • Port of FVCOM and SELFE to HPC systems. • Excellent collaboration model development, testing for WAVEWATCH III • fully coupled wave-current interaction plus inundation capabilities for FVCOM, ADCIRC, SELFE and SLOSH models for extratropical and tropical storms. • Transfer forecast products to the Taunton WFO. – R2O NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

7. Outcomes and Scientific Insights Gained • Important to resolve coastal morphology w respect to model tides and storm surge, particularly in flat coastal areas. • Bathymetry / resolution can determine whether an observational point such as a NOAA tide gauge is in a “wet” or “dry” grid element. • Significant differences in storm surge results can occur using the same wind forcing, between 2D and 3D simulations, particularly in coastal regions near the storm track. • It is important to have dynamically coupled wave-surge models: • Waves contribute ~ 1m to surge during Hurricane Ike on the LATX shelf in GOM • In Scituate experiments, waves, produce a significant onshore water flux. NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

8. NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

9. For Chart 11369 I see controlling depth corrections that are the newest data dating back to 1994. I also note the Source of the surveys for the area as B4, dating from 1900 to 1939 and for area B5 as Pre-1900. So, does that mean that the bathymetry you are using for the New Canal Station dates back this far? For Chart 11349 it looks like the depths in the inlet is a compilation of NOS surveys, full bottom coverage, but spanning a time period of 1990 to 1908. Note that the areas in the Bay and seaward of this area is using bathymetric data from before 1939. This area of the Delta changes rapidly (year by year).  Depths on this chart are as much as 100 years old and would not represent present day conditions. NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

10. Outcomes and Scientific Insights Gained Insights (continued): • In Nor’easters the maximum flooding is at or near high tide. (c’mon) • Models are sensitive to wind averaging time used in the wave and surge models. A “wind gust factor” is sometimes used to convert between different wind averaging intervals. • For tides, ADCIRC, FVCOM and SELFE provide similar results in the GOM differ due to model ramping, run lengths and harmonic analysis software. • importance of proper frictional balance on the shelf and the need to fully model the LATX shelf (geostrophic setup, nepheloid, “foreunner” and near track surge) • Using the same wind forcing, ADCIRC, FVCOM and SELFE in 2D appear to have a similar surge response for Ike. SLOSH seemed to miss the foreunner and has a significantly lower surge than the other models. NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

11. What is in the Cyber Toolbox? • Unstructured Grid Support – Beta version – supports time series extraction, • extracting sub-setted gridded data is next. • Matlab Toolbox – New version of NJToolbox (ASA) w Signell – is available • Skill Assessment – IMEDS – ASA development support under Jeff’s • guidance. • Obs Data as NetCDFconx to TDS Catalog –module for Thredds that • provides SOS services for data managed • by TDS. • Catalog Services – ASA has implemented Ramadda and GI-CAT and • exploring ESRI Geoportal Toolkit. • neWMS – A new branch of ncWMS available from OpenSource Project • Collaborative Website – testbed.sura.org NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

12. Cyber Tool Box - Model Skill Assessment Model Prediction of Wave Height Measured Wave Height Target Analysis IMEDS – Interactive Model Evaluation & Diagnostic System NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

13. Challenges to Progress and Lessons Learned • Each modeling team entered the project with their own way of doing business This has caused many “gotchas” and “do overs” along the way. This is particularly problematic for comparing models. Standardization is clearly important! • Existing tropical grid has poor resolution in inland areas, causing poor hydraulic conductivity and precluding accurate inundation results. • Including wave-current interaction significantly increases the computational power needed for an inundation simulation. When using the same number of nodes, the time required to run the coupled current-wave system can vary from 2x to 10x more than the case without waves (model dependent). • Significant computing and logistical challenges are associated with computing storm surge/waves/inundation on high resolution grids. This is a particularly true for real time model runs. NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

14. Cyber Tool Box – Standardize the Output NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

15. Challenges to Progress and Lessons Learned • Challenges remain to get all models to run on all compute platforms. • Specific science questions, e.g., in the Gulf of Maine, modeled winds compare well to buoy observations, yet waves are notably underestimated, tidal harmonic analysis is not as robust as anticipated. • The wind gust effect. In the 2010 Nor’easter event, using the gust wind instead of the mean wind to compute the surface wind stress and energy input increases the wind energy input by 24%. Since inundation usually occurs at the maximum wind and high tide, correctly incorporating the gust winds is a critical issue in making accurate inundation hindcasts/forecasts. • The rapid project time line and milestone / products focus has at times been challenging for participants. NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

16. Benefits of TAEG & SURA Mgmt • Data transfer between computer platforms and SURA data archive remains a problem. • SURA might pursue dialogue and funding from an expanded set of federal partners. Ideally we would diversify our funding from solely IOOS. • The surge/inundation has benefited from TAEG Bruce Ebersole feedback. • Strongly encourage standardization, in terms of model I/O, skill metrics and tools available to work with standardized model products. • Need for easy & advanced tools for model assessment. Matlab statistics (e.g. means, stds, vertical averages) on large data sets may be very slow. Fortran may improve efficiency of analysis for implementation on parallel machines. NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop

17. A Testbed Home in NCEP Key to the success of a Testbed is the inclusion of strong partnerships among U.S. agencies that have missions or applications in ocean and coastal environment prediction, natural hazard mitigation and environmental resource stewardship. Thank you – doug.levin@noaa.gov NOAA/USACE Coastal R&D Coordination Workshop