Published works

Major advances were achieved during 2016 and the project is on track to produce, by the end of 2017, improved predictions of extreme sea levels targeted to emergency managers and planners. This will be achieved through application of an improved high-resolution hydrodynamic model that has been developed and tested for a wide range of extreme events occurring over the past 30+ years around Australia.

Long-term model runs for the years 1959-2016 are presently nearing completion using improved meteorological forcing, higher spatial resolution at the coastline (up to 100 m), and improved bathymetic data compared to Haigh et al [1, 2] (Figure 3). The multi-decadal simulations are approximately 30% (1959-1979), complete and are expected to be finished within the upcoming month. Concurrently, work is ongoing to synthesise the results into effective communication tools for the improved sea level estimates, based on feedback from end-users. 

The UWA team has worked to directly share knowledge gained through the project with the BOM storm surge model development team, as well through presentations of modeling advances at national conferences and workshops, including: AFAC (30 August 2016, Brisbane), Australian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society (AMOS, October 2016) and internationally in the UK over the past year.

Communication was initiated with end-users to develop effective data dissemination tools during a BNHCRC workshop at Geoscience Australia in Canberra during April 2017. The work has been cited as an important benchmark to give context to forecasts produced my BOM, and to give consistent estimates for planning purposes over broad regions. The project also interacted with the BNHCRC terrestrial flooding researchers from Monash University who expressed interest in using the UWA sea level predictions as ocean boundary conditions for their flood models. 

Specific advances related to physical processes influencing predictions of extreme sea levels that have been achieved to date are summarised in the subsections below and explained in more detail in this report. These processes include: 

• Wave setup contributions to storm surges calculated via coupled wavesurge model – this work was presented at the ACOMO workshop in Canberra in October 2016, and a journal article has been prepared for the Journal of Geophysical Research. 
• Extratropical Transition – JRA55 reanalysis model has proved to be superior to atmospheric forcing previously used, and has been implemented. 
• Continental Shelf Waves – modeling requirements (3D with density effects) to reproduce CSW have been defined– this work was recently presented at the Australasian Coasts and Ports Conference in Cairns, June 2017.
• Meteotsunamis – continued analysis of high frequency tide gauge data around Australia.