Behavior of surges in Alexandria Eastern Harbor, Egypt

Abstract

Alexandria Eastern Harbor (AEH) is constantly enduring the destructive problem of storm surges. Therefore, the investigation of the behavior of surges in the Harbor is crucial, and determining to which extent this is affected by the meteorological conditions is essential. We used hourly data of sea-level, from 10.06.2018 to 15.06.2020, to calculate AEH surge heights. Simultaneous records of winds and sea-level pressure (SLP) were used to examine their impact on the calculated surges. Also, an empirical equation was derived to estimate the surge height in AEH by knowing the SLP and winds.Results revealed a 99% contribution of surges to the recorded sea-level. Surge heights exhibited a seasonal pattern with lower values in spring and higher ones in summer. While the positive surges dominated the Harbor all the year-round, the negative surges appeared only in 8 months: January-June, in addition to October and November.The total and the positive surges were directly proportional to all wind components but the negative parallel ones. Contrariwise, the negative surge associated the decrease of all wind components except the negative parallel and the negative normal components. There was an inverse relationship between the total, positive and negative surge heights and the SLP.

Keywords

• Alexandria
• Eastern Harbor
• Surges
• Meteorology
• Seasonality
• Regression