Combined impacts of hurricane strengthening and global mean sea level rise on future Atlantic storm surge events
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- Volume 178, article number 238 (2025)
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- Derrick K. Danso ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7141-7530 1 ,
- Christina M. Patricola-DiRosario ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3387-0307 1,2 &
- Karthik Balaguru ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0181-2687 3
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320 Accesses
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Abstract
Projected increases in tropical cyclone (TC) intensity and sea level rise (SLR) are expected to worsen storm surges. This study assesses their individual and combined impacts on 20 historical TCs along the U.S. Atlantic Coast using the ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) model. Hindcasts were generated using best track data, followed by experiments assessing surge responses to projected SLR and stronger TCs. Results show that SLR effects vary by location and metric, with surge heights generally decreasing near the present-day shoreline but increasing further inland. With 0.74 m SLR, maximum surge can decrease by up to 0.7 m, while the area-averaged surge increases by up to 0.1 m, indicating inland water redistribution. Increased TC intensity generally raises both maximum and mean surge heights across all SLR scenarios. A 10% increase in TC intensity can elevate maximum surge by over 1 m and expand inundated areas by up to 25% under present-day sea level and up to 400% with 0.74 m of SLR. We also find that the effect of TC intensity increase is nonlinear with SLR for maximum surge but approximately linear for area-averaged surge. Finally, for TCs with similar landfall locations, greater absolute intensity increases lead to higher surge increases under present-day sea levels. Under SLR, we find a similar response only for TCs impacting gently sloped shelves. For steeply sloped shelves, faster forward speed tends to produce greater increases in storm surge.
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Discover the latest articles, books and news in related subjects, suggested using machine learning.Data availability
The best track data used to run the ADCIRC model can be obtained from http://tropicalatlantic.com/models/models.cgi?archive=1. The Extended Best Track data are available from https://rammb2.cira.colostate.edu/research/tropical-cyclones/tc_extended_best_track_dataset/. The simulated maximum elevation data for the TC events are archived at https://zenodo.org/records/17601768. All other simulation output are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Code availability
The code for the ADCIRC model can be requested from the developers from https://adcirc.org/. Several utility programs for the ADCIRC model are available from https://adcirc.org/home/related-software/adcirc-utility-programs.
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Acknowledgements
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), Earth and Environmental Systems Modeling (EESM) Program, under Early Career Research Program Award Number DE-SC0021109. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, using NERSC award BER-ERCAP-m4858. The authors would like to thank Casey Dietrich for his comments during the analyses. We thank Rick Luettich and the ADCIRC Development Group for developing the ADCIRC model (https://adcirc.org/) and Crystal Fulcher for providing access to the ADCIRC code. K.B. was supported by BER as part of the collaborative, multi-program Integrated Coastal Modeling project. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated for DOE by Battelle Memorial Institute under contract DE-AC05-76RL01830. We thank three anonymous reviewers whose constructive comments helped to greatly improve this study.
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Danso, D., Patricola-DiRosario, C. & Balaguru, K. Combined impacts of hurricane strengthening and global mean sea level rise on future Atlantic storm surge events. Climatic Change 178, 238 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-025-04081-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-025-04081-5
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