2016 AMS Annual Meeting

Room 352

The AMS Short Course on Coastal Surge and Inundation Modeling will be held on 10 January 2016 preceding the 96^th AMS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

In the immediate coastal zone, a landfalling tropical cyclone’s storm surge poses the greatest threat of causing large fatalities and damage compared to its other destructive elements. Surge events from Gulf Coast hurricanes such as Katrina, Rita, Ivan, and Ike have motivated improvements in surge modeling, risk assessment, and emergency management. On the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, this short course: 1) teaches the theory and basic principles behind surge modeling; 2) explains different applications of the models, with a focus on conveying surge uncertainty both operationally and in mitigation practices; and 3) provides basic training on two widely-used modeling platforms, ADCIRC and SLOSH, in the form of a hands-on tutorial.

A unique component of this class is the dual introduction to ADCIRC and SLOSH by leading developers of each code. The ADCIRC hands-on training will be provided using the Surface water Modeling System (SMS), a graphical user interface with many GIS-like features for producing ADCIRC input files and output visualization. The SLOSH Graphical User Interface will be used for running the SLOSH model and to visualize its output. These codes will be demonstrated on a Windows platform, but the methodology for running on Linux/UNIX will be briefly explained as well.

Instructors for the course include: Rick Luettich, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC; Arthur Taylor, NOAA/NWS/Meteorological Development Lab, Silver Spring, MD; Jesse Feyen, NOAA/NOS/Office of Coast Survey, Silver Spring, MD; and Pat Fitzpatrick, Mississippi State University at Stennis Space Center, MS.

A luncheon will be provided during the short course. The afternoon training session will be conducted on Windows-based laptops, which each participants should bring along to the course.

The class outline is as follows:

Morning session with two breaks

• Background on storm surge physics
• Overview of SLOSH model
• Overview of ADCIRC model
• Characterizing surge uncertainty
  1. Real-time probabilistic application: P-Surge
  2. Surge climate: MEOWs and MOMs
  3. Surface response functions and ADCIRC-Lite
  4. Joint probability theory

Afternoon session with one break

• SLOSH tutorial
• ADCIRC tutorial