MODELING THE MORPHOLOGICAL SENSITIVITY OF LARGE NONTIDAL COASTAL AREAS TO CLIMATOLOGICAL CHANGES

Abstract

This paper deals with two-dimensional hydrodynamical and morphological modelling of a large nontidal coastal area located at the German coast of the Baltic Sea. This work has been carried out in order to consider the morphological response of this region caused by climatological changes. The morphological processes in this region are mainly wave-dominated, hence a shallow water wave model was coupled with a vertical integrated flow model. Stationary simulations for waves, currents and sediment transport are carried ou tfor a large range of meteorological situations, which were defined due to a statistical analysis of the output fields of a coupled ocean - atmosphere global circulation model. The wave parameters of this surface wave model are used as input to coastal area models. The calculated morphological trends obtained for different meteorological situations show good agreement with the morphological changes observed in this area. By combining and weighting the individual situations the resulting flow field and sediment transport for known meteorological events can be found. The morphological sensitivity to climatological changes of the coastal area is investigated by applying this methodology to different climate scenarios.