Cover art for (Abstract) Forecasting the Impact of Storm Waves and SeaLevel Rise on Midway Atoll and Laysan Island  within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National  Monument—A Comparison of Passive Versus  Dynamic Inundation Models by U.S. Geological Survey

(Abstract) Forecasting the Impact of Storm Waves and SeaLevel Rise on Midway Atoll and Laysan Island within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument—A Comparison of Passive Versus Dynamic Inundation Models

(Abstract) Forecasting the Impact of Storm Waves and SeaLevel Rise on Midway Atoll and Laysan Island within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument—A Comparison of Passive Versus Dynamic Inundation Models Lyrics

Two inundation events in 2011 underscored the potential for elevated
water levels to damage infrastructure and affect terrestrial
ecosystems on the low-lying Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in the
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. The goal of this study
was to compare passive “bathtub” inundation models based on
geographic information systems (GIS) to those that include dynamic
water levels caused by wave-induced set-up and run-up
for
two endmember island morphologies: Midway, a classic atoll with
islands on the shallow (2–8 m) atoll rim and a deep, central lagoon;
and Laysan, which is characterized by a deep (20–30 m) atoll rim
and an island at the center of the atoll. Vulnerability to elevated
water levels was assessed using hindcast wind and wave data to drive
coupled physics-based numerical wave, current, and waterlevel models
for the atolls.

The resulting model data were then used to compute run-up elevations
using a parametric run-up equation under both present conditions
and future sea-levelrise scenarios. In both geomorphologies, wave
heights
and wavelengths adjacent to the island shorelines increased
more than three times and four times, respectively, with increasing
values of sea-level rise, as more deep-water wave energy could
propagate over the atoll rim and larger wind-driven waves could
develop on the atoll. Although these increases in water depth
resulted in decreased set-up along the islands’ shorelines, the
larger wave heights and longer wavelengths due to sea-level rise
increased the resulting wave-induced run-up. Run-up values were
spatially heterogeneous and dependent on the direction of incident
wave direction, bathymetry, and island configuration.
Island inundation was modeled to increase substantially when
wave-driven effects were included, suggesting that inundation and
impacts to infrastructure and terrestrial habitats will occur at
lower values of predicted sea-level rise, and thus sooner in the
21st century
, than suggested by passive GIS-based “bathtub”
inundation models. Lastly, observations and the modeling results
suggest that classic atolls with islands on a shallow atoll rim
are more susceptible to the combined effects of sea-level rise
and wave-driven inundation than atolls characterized by a
deep atoll rim.

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