Wind forcing effect on hindcasting of typhoon-driven extreme waves
Journal
Ocean Engineering
Journal Volume
188
Pages
-
Date Issued
2019
Author(s)
Abstract
Large waves generated by typhoons can pose a serious threat to human life and property in the coastal areas of Taiwan. We hypothesize that an accurate hindcast of typhoon-generated significant wave heights (SWHs) is highly dependent on an accurate typhoon wind field. This paper evaluated the performance of SWH modeling for typhoons on the northeastern coast of Taiwan using different wind fields and a fully coupled tide-surge-wave model. Wind products from the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR), ERA-Interim (ERA), and Cross-Calibrated Multi-Platform V2 (CCMPV2) were blended into the parametric typhoon models (hybrid wind models) to serve as the main forcing in the fully coupled model. The results of model-data comparison for SWHs reveal that the hindcasts only using the CFSR, ERA and CCMPV2 own the excellent skill indexes ranging from 0.92 to 0.94. The use of hybrid wind models indicated a consistent improvement in SWH hindcasting, and the CCMPV2 combined with the parametric typhoon model has the best overall performance. However, the extremely large typhoon-induced SWHs (exceeding 11 m) can only be well-matched when the CFSR merged with the parametric typhoon model was imposed on the fully coupled model.
Type
journal article