DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY

Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership S E Asia (WCSSP) - Calls - tender - UNIVERSITY OF READING

Project disclaimer

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Description

Understanding and Prediction of Compound Ocean-Atmosphere Storms in the Tropics (SEA-COAST) The South-East Asia region (SEA) is prone to extreme precipitation and winds from weather systems operating at different scales, e.g. squall lines, tropical cyclones or cold surges. Ocean processes like ocean tides, sea-waves and ocean surge driven by these weather systems can aggravate their impacts, the so-called compound events. For example, increasing the risk of flooding in extreme precipitation events, or the risk of damaging infrastructure in extreme wind cases. The provision of effective weather warnings for coastal hazards over the SEA region requires sophisticated modelling tools, with enough detail to represent the multiscale behaviour of local hazards, the interactions between different components of the environment and the region’s complex coastlines and orography. Forecasting tools to support decision-making include an atmosphere model at convective scale resolutions to capture the convection processes and its feedback to larger scales, a full 3-D or a 2-D barotropic ocean model to capture tides and storm surge, and a wave model to capture the total sea level. These models run as an ensemble with schemes representing the uncertainty of the initial condition and modelled processes to capture the uncertainty of the events. Relevant areas of improvement include the prediction of the impacts and uncertainty of costal hazards linked to (a) tropical cyclone landfall for cases where rapid intensification occurred, (b) smaller-scale convective processes with an associated storm surge and enhanced seawaves. This work is focused on developing scientific understanding on the predictability of coastal hazards over SEA and the development of prototypes for forecasting coastal hazards and collaboration with in-country partners.

Objectives

The SEA-COAST project aims to develop new capabilities in forecasting compound air-sea extreme events and their impacts in priority SEA countries (initially the Philippines and Vietnam). This development will create new value from the recently developed convective-scale NWP ensembles by improving coastal hazard prediction. Specific objectives are: O1: Establish a foundational prediction system for compound air-sea extremes in the SEA region, referred to as the SEA coastal hazard modelling suite, which is integrated with the latest global parametrised and regional convective-scale NWP forecasts. O2: Evaluate the predictability of compound air-sea extremes and identify key sources of uncertainty in the SEA region, including explicitly investigating the added value of ocean wave coupling in coastal hazard prediction. O3: Deepen the understanding of scale interactions driving compound air-sea extremes. O4: Explore strategies to further enhance the skill of probabilistic forecasts of compound extremes, including approaches to better accounting to uncertainties and exploring the fidelity of NEMO over this region. O5: Collaborate with in-country partners to translate scientific advances into prototype operational tools meeting the needs of the region using existing computing capability.

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Location

The country, countries or regions that benefit from this Programme.

Far East Asia, regional

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