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#           Modeling total water level and coastal change at Pea Island, North Carolina, USA      

      April 15, 2023    

The DUring Nearshore Event eXperiment (DUNEX) was carried out on Pea Island, North Carolina, USA between September-October 2021. We use a coupled numerical model (Windsurf) to hindcast the evolution of the DUNEX transect and produce a time series of hourly water levels at the shoreline from the model output. In addition to assessing the ability of Windsurf to reproduce TWL, we use model output paired with an ensemble of empirical models to assess how TWL forecasts can be improved by incorporating dynamic morphology. The morphological hindcast achieved an RMSE of 0.10 m and a BSS of 0.47, while the total water level (TWL) time series from the model correlates with the U.S. Geological Survey forecast (r2 = 0.61) for the study period but with a 0.47 m bias that is primarily due to the much steeper beach slope used to produce the forecast compared to that surveyed at the start of the study period. We find that using dynamic morphology provides a small but statistically significant (α = 0.05) improvement in predicting TWL versus applying the pre-storm beach slope to the whole time series.

## Citation Information

## Related Content

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#### Michael Itzkin, Ph.D.

##### Research Geologist (Mendenhall)

St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

mitzkin@usgs.gov

#### Margaret Palmsten, Ph.D.

##### Research Oceanographer

St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

mpalmsten@usgs.gov

727-502-8018

#### Mark Buckley, Ph.D.

##### Research Oceanographer

St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

mbuckley@usgs.gov

727-502-8024

#### Christopher Sherwood, PhD

##### Research Oceanographer

Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

csherwood@usgs.gov

508-457-2269

#### Jenna Brown, PhD

##### Research Oceanographer

Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center

jennabrown@usgs.gov

302-213-5071

#### Jin-Si R Over

##### Geographer

Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

jover@usgs.gov

508-457-2269

## Related Content

#### Michael Itzkin, Ph.D.

##### Research Geologist (Mendenhall)

St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

mitzkin@usgs.gov

#### Margaret Palmsten, Ph.D.

##### Research Oceanographer

St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

mpalmsten@usgs.gov

727-502-8018

#### Mark Buckley, Ph.D.

##### Research Oceanographer

St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

mbuckley@usgs.gov

727-502-8024

#### Christopher Sherwood, PhD

##### Research Oceanographer

Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

csherwood@usgs.gov

508-457-2269

#### Jenna Brown, PhD

##### Research Oceanographer

Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center

jennabrown@usgs.gov

302-213-5071

#### Jin-Si R Over

##### Geographer

Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

jover@usgs.gov

508-457-2269

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####               St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center          

600 4th Street SouthSt. Petersburg, FL33701United States

727-502-8000

727-502-8181

#### Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

384 Woods Hole Rd.Woods Hole, MA02543United States

508-548-8700

508-457-2310

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