Numerical Simulation of Large Wave Heights from Super Typhoon Nepartak (2016) in the Eastern Waters of Taiwan

Abstract

Super Typhoon Nepartak (2016) was used for this case study because it is the most intense typhoon that made landfall in Taiwan in the past decade. Winds extracted from the Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSV2) and ERA5 datasets and merged with a parametric typhoon model using two hybrid techniques served as the meteorological conditions for driving a coupled wave-circulation model. The computed significant wave heights were compared with the observations recorded at three wave buoys in the eastern waters of Taiwan. Model performance in terms of significant wave height was also investigated by employing the CFSV2 winds under varying spatial and temporal resolutions. The results of the numerical experiments reveal that the simulated storm wave heights tended to decrease significantly due to the lower spatial resolution of the hourly winds from the CFSV2 dataset; however, the variations in the storm wave height simulations were less sensitive to the temporal resolution of the wind field. Introducing the combination of the CFSV2 and the parametric typhoon winds greatly improved the storm wave simulations, and similar phenomena can be found in the exploitation of the ERA5 dataset blended into the parametric wind field. The overall performance of the hybrid winds derived from ERA5 was better than that from the CFSV2, especially in the outer region of Super Typhoon Nepartak (2016).

Keywords

• storm wave height
• super typhoon
• wave-circulation model
• hybrid winds