Air–Sea–Land Interactions During Tropical Cyclones

Abstract

Air–sea–land interaction is a branch of boundary‐layer geophysics including coastal meteorology, physical oceanography, and marine geology. Numerous topics related to the air–sea–land interactions during tropical cyclones (TCs) are discussed. Since most of these topics are related to the general public to save life and property during a TC, simplified formulas are presented for use including the rapid estimations of wind, wave, current, storm surge, wave setup, turbulence intensity (TI), gust factor, shoaling depth, and seabed scouring. In addition, when a storm track is located on the left of a major river such as the Mississippi river during Hurricane Isaac in 2012, it is found that the storm surges can propagate more than 228 river miles or 367 km inland and are approximately related to the square root of the distance upstream.

Some Value-Added Met-Ocean Products to the RAMMB’s TC Surface Analysis for Marine Meteorological Applications

“…On the basis of aforementioned analysis and discussion, it is concluded that following met-ocean variables or products may be added to the RAMMB's TC surface wind analysis. For a given isotach: significant wave height can be estimated using Equation (1); overwater friction velocity, Equation (4); drift-current velocity, Equation (5); wind stress, Equation (7); atmospheric vorticity, Equation (8); vertical velocity, Equation (9); wind-stress tide, Equation (10); and wave set-up, Equation (11). In addition, in order to estimate the wind-stress tide, two case studies are presented.…”

“…Finally, in order to save life and protect property along the relatively flat coastal zones in a TCprone region, the magnitude of storm surge induced by the TC needs to be estimated. According to [7,8], the wind-induced water level, Swind in meters, constitutes more than 80% of total storm surge and following [9,10] it may be estimated as 𝑆 wind = 0.005𝑈 10 2 (10) This formula has been applied by [11] that, during Hurricane Delta (2020), the areas inside of 50 knots (25.8 m s -1 ) isotach can produce up to 11 ft (3.3 m) high water level above the ground, whereas during Laura's landfall in 2020, the area inside of 65 knots (33.5 m s -1 ) isotach up to 18 ft (5.6 m) inundation.…”

“…In addition, because of its destructive wave-force impact on structures, the magnitude of wave set-up, Sset-up, on the top of the storm surge, needs to be estimated that [10],…”