Abstract
The ability of the SMARA storm surge numerical prediction system to reproduce local effects in estuarine and coastal winds was recently improved by considering one-way coupling of the air–sea momentum exchange through the wave stress, and best forecasting practices for downscaling. The inclusion of long period atmospheric pressure forcing in tide and tide/surge calculations corrected a systematic error in the surge, produced by the South Atlantic Ocean quasi-stationary pressure patterns. The maximum forecast range for the storm surge at Buenos Aires provided by the real-time use of water level observations is approximately 12 h. The best available water level prediction is the 6-h forecast (nowcast) based on the closest water level observations. The 24-h forecast from the numerical models slightly improves this nowcast. Although the numerical forecast accuracy degrades after the first 48 h, the improvement to the full range observation-based prediction is maintained at the inner Río de la Plata area and extends to the first 3 days at the intermediate navigation channels.
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Acknowledgments
Martina Suaya (SMN) reviewed the surface wind interpolation scheme in Eta and provided the experimental high-resolution winds. Mauricio Gatto supported wet models’ operations at SMN. Global meteorological fields were acquired from National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and National Weather Service (NWS) ftp servers. Climatological MSL pressure fields were obtained from NCEP Reanalysis Derived data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/. The Jason-1 Operational Sensor Data Record (OSDR) altimeter 10-m wind data were obtained from the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov. Claudia Romero performed the storm surge forecast verification. Stella Maris Alonso provided programming support to this work.
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Etala, P. On the accuracy of atmospheric forcing for extra-tropical storm surge prediction. Nat Hazards 51, 49–61 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-009-9377-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-009-9377-0