Methodology and data for quantifying storm erosion potential considering sea level rise

TL;DR

This paper provides a dataset quantifying how historical storms could have caused more erosion with future sea level rise along the New Jersey coast.

Contribution

The novelty is quantifying historical storm erosion potential under future sea level rise scenarios using detailed hydrodynamic data.

Findings

Storm erosion potential was calculated for three sea level conditions including future IPCC projections.

Hourly wave and water level data at 13 locations support modeling of nearshore storm impacts.

The dataset enables direct comparison of historical storms under different sea level rise scenarios.

Abstract

This dataset quantifies storm intensity of approximately 130 unique historical storms along the New Jersey coastline from 1980 to 2014 for three separate sea level conditions. Namely, (1) as observed in the historical record; (2) detrended to 1997 mean sea level and (3) adjusted to the 2050 and 2100 sea level rise scenarios presented in the International Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). Projected sea level scenarios are adjusted to include local vertical land movement. Storm intensity is quantified in terms of erosion potential, considering the combination of total water level, wave heights, and storm duration. The observational dataset includes both tropical and extratropical storms and quantifies both the cumulative (duration) and peak (single hour) storm intensity for each storm and sea level rise (SLR) condition. Additionally, hourly time series of wave characteristics and water levels are provided at 13 locations along the New Jersey coast, facilitating hydrodynamic forcing of nearshore models. The dataset provides the means and methods to directly compare historical storms under future SLR conditions.

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