Rodriguez-Fernandez, Ernesto J.

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Hindcast of hurricane storm surge for Puerto Rico using a tight coupling unstructured current model SELFE (Semi-implicit Eulerian-Lagrangian Finite Element) and the WWM II (Wind Wave Model II)
(2013) Rodriguez-Fernandez, Ernesto J.; Mercado, Aurelio; College of Arts and Sciences - Sciences; Morell, Julio; Canals, Miguel; Kubaryk, John M.; Department of Marine Sciences; Huerfano, Victor
A state-of-the-art, semi-implicit Eulerian-Lagrangian finite element model SELFE and a spectral wave model (WWM II) were tested in Puerto Rico. The research was focused mainly in validating the coupled model in a complex island environment. In this thesis, a fully coupled wave-current interaction model, SELFE+WWM II is used to hindcast the storm surge, water levels and wave fields of two hurricanes that impacted Puerto Rico during 1998 and 2011. Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Hurricane Irene in 2011 were the last two hurricanes that made landfall over mainland Puerto Rico. In general, the results from SELFE+WWM II indicate a good agreement with the observed data for both cases. Overall, the study showed that SELFE+WWM II has huge potential to be implemented as an operational model to forecast storm surge, wave field and coastal inundation when the user provides the best possible representation of the hurricane track and the intensity of the winds