Property:Extended movie description
From CSDMS
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100 years of permafrost warming in Alaska.
This movie uses climate model data and soil mappings as input. The movie only shows the evolution of the mean annual temperature at 1 m depth for each gridcell. A significant warming can be seen. +
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A close up of bed load transportation with a still camera frame.
50g/m/s 7.0mm d50
50g/m/s 0.20mm d50
Grain Size ratio = 35 +
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A debris flow occurring in California. +
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A helicopter flies over a landslide scar in Maierato, Southern Italy.
Most of the sliding happened on February 15th, 2010, but the area is notorious for landsliding and the hillslope was moving previously as well.
This area of Italy, Calabria, is known for its landslides. Heavy rains preceded the event and caused ~100 other smaller slides in the region. +
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A high speed movie illustrating the formation of cyclic steps in an experimental drainage basin subject to constant base level fall (done to model a constant uplift of the basin). +
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A major landslide in Japan takes out part of the highway 168. The first coverage shows the vegetation sliding by the camera. Helicopter footage shows the landslide scar in the perspective of the river valley. The comments associated with this film indicate that two typhoons preceded this events. +
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A series of landslides occurred in late April and May 2012 in the headwaters of the Seti River. These caused a landslide dam wall, which blocked the normal flow of river. Seti river means 'White River', because it normally has the typical milky color of rivers that drain a glaciated area. However, because the river was bloked it was unusually clear, untill May 5th. Early in the morning of May 5th, 2012 a large rockfall occurred high on the ridgeline of the Annapurna massive, the rock and debris came down with tremendous force. Along its steep course the rock melted snow and ice and picked up more debris. This debris and te floodwave hit the dammed up Seti River and caused the earlier landslide dam to abruptly break.
The video shows the slurry of water and sediment traveling through the Seti River valley. The initial pulse of debris and hyperconcentrated muddy water damaged many houses and probably 72 people were killed. This region is conducive for these natural hazards, the relief is extremely high and avalanches and rockfalls are common. The downstream rivers have eroded into lake bed sediments and thus can easily erode more. Furthermore the monsoonal climate of the region can trigger unstabilities due to high rain events. +
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A small plane is flying around the ash cloud of Eyjafjalljokull. This footage was recorded on April 22nd, 2010, a few days after the second phase of the eruption started. The second phase of the eruption was in the centre of Eyjafjallajokull glacier. Although it was cloudy flying towards the glacier close to the center of the eruption the air warms up so much that clouds evaporate and you will get a glimpse of the slope of the vulcano.
Interesting to note the visible soundwaves from the explosions in the final section of the film..somehow caught by the sun glinting off steam emitted as the volcano melts the surrounding ice cap. +
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A small river confluence in Illinois with an asymmetrical confluence and a concordant bed.
The different cross-sections in the example focus on mixing of rivers with different water temperatures (thermal mixing). The large-scale engulfing by the ML eddies promotes mixing. The large-scale oscillations of SOV cells play an important role in the mixing between the two streams. +
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Animation of coastal beach formation during summer season. This cycle would be typical for for example beaches in California. +
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Animation of waves affecting a beach profile during winter. This animation is typical for example for California. +
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April 2010, a jökulhlaup resulting from the volcanic eruption near
Eyjafjallajökull.
This movie shows how the generated meltwater and debris spills out of side-gullies and along the valley wall. When the flow reaches the local valley bottom, the sandur surface it fans out. The helicopter flies low over the flow in the sandur plain and one can see standing waves being generated by the shallow fast-moving water. This is an indication that large bedforms are actively formed and migrating over the bottom. It can also been seen that even over the floodplain the flow has erosive effect and incises an estimated > 1,5 m banks. +
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BFM TV, a french television network (http://www.bfmtv.com/), captured spectacular footage of bluff failure occurring in coastal France. BFM TV reported that ~30,000 tons of material was moved.
Also discussed at:
http://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2013/07/23/rock-topple-france/
http://coastalcare.org/2013/07/normandy-cliff-collapses-onto-beach-at-st-jouin-bruneval/ +
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Barrier Islands migrate over the shelf in response to sea level changes. Here the sandy deposits that form the actual island, first prograde outward, during sea level fall and then retrograde when sea level is coming up again. +
Bed load transport due to moving water flowing over the bedload surface from multiple angles. All scenes are slowed down. The first is a mixture of 95% sand and 5% gravel. The second is a mixture of 80% sand and 20% gravel. The third is the same mixture. +
Bed load transportation with a moving camera frame.
50g/m/s 7.0mm d50
50g/m/s 0.20mm d50
Grain Size ratio = 35 +
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Bernhard Lehner (department of geography, at McGill University) and others worked for years together to establish a world database on reservoirs. Over 5000 reservoirs are included presently and presented over time in this visualization.
Data can be found at: http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/collection/grand-v1 +
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Bioturbation is the mixing of plant and other organic matter into soils and sediments by biotic activity. It is one of the fundamental processes in ecology, as it stimulates decomposition, creates habitats for other (micro)fauna and increases gas- and water flow through the soil.
This time lapse movie shows bioturbation by 3 earthworms species:
- Lumbricus terrestris (an ’anecic’ earthworm, feeding on leaves and living in deep vertical burrows; 2 individuals present)
- Lumbricus rubellus (an ’epigeic’ earthworm, feeding on leaves and living in shallow, non-permanent burrows; 2 individuals present)
- Aporrectodea caliginosa (an ‘endogeic’ earthworm, feeding on decomposed organic matter and living deeper in the soil; 3 individuals present).
Poplar leaves were applied on top of the soil as food for the earthworms. Different soil layers were simulated by mixing a topsoil (rich in organic matter) with quartz sand in various ratios.
The recording lasted 1 month.
This movie was made in collaboration with scientists from the Department of Soil Quality of Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
Soil screening: I.M. Lubbers & J.W. van Groenigen
Marie Curie Alumni: G.B. De Deyn
Microphonography: Urban Utan
Time lapse photography © Wim van Egmond - 2014
With the support of the Marie Curie Alumni Association +
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CHILD model simulation of a meandering river in its floodplain. The meander migrates through the floodplain, depositing channel sands in its bed.
Associated movies are shown here: https://csdms.colorado.edu/wiki/Model:CHILD +
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CU Science update featured a short movie on 'Sinking Deltas'.
There is a widespread need to assess the vulnerability of the world’s population living in low-lying deltas to flooding, whether from intense rainfall, rivers or from hurricane-induced storm surges. High-resolution NASA SRTM topography data and MODIS satellite data along with georeferenced historical map analysis allows quantification of the extent of low-lying delta areas and the role of humans in contributing to their vulnerability. Thirty-three major deltas collectively include ~26,008 km2 of area below local mean sea level and ~96,000 km2 of vulnerable area below 2 m a.s.l. This vulnerable area may increase 50% under projected 21st Century eustatic sea level rise. Analysis of river sediment load data and of topographical changes show that these densely populated, intensively farmed landforms, that often host key economic structures, have been destabilized by human-induced accelerated sediment compaction due to water, oil and gas mining, and by reductions of incoming sediment from upstream dams and reservoirs and floodplain engineering. +
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Credits to:<br>
Albert Kettner, CU - INSTAAR<br>
Greg Fiske, WHRC<br>
Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink, WHOI<br>
The animation shows the size of river drainage basins, or watersheds, scaled to the mass of sediment transported by the rivers to the coastal oceans. The color code (upper right corner) corresponds to million tons (Mt) of sediment per week. The time bar on the bottom shows the progression throughout the year. The sun symbol on the map shows the movement of the high-point of the sun throughout the seasons as an alternative time marker. +
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Cuspate spits are here simulated with the Coastline Evolution Model (CEM) of Andrew Ashton.
Sediment transport occurs under the influence of longshore transport that is driven by wave action.
Coastal spits form and built out with time, the colors are coded for depositional age.
In this particular animation the incoming far-field wave distribution is weighted so that high angles with the shoreline are dominant, and the wave direction is predominantly from the left. +
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Daily estimates of the sea ice concentration based on remotely-sensed passive microwave data for 2009. The red colors are 100% sea ice, whereas the blue colors show sea ice free conditions (also called open water). +
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Emplacement of the topset by braided streams in an experimental fan-delta undergoing subsidence. Most significant alluvial processes are labeled. +
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Erosion process and river response caused by the sudden removal of a sediment dam, top view. +
Erosion process and river response caused by the sudden removal of a sediment dam, front view. +
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Evolution of river valley landscape, stratigraphy, and geoarchaeology, Channel Sands (Transverse Section) +
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Expansion of Sea Ice Free Days from 1920-2100
Sea ice covers large regions of the Arctic Ocean. At present, the northernmost waters remains frozen all year, in other regions seawater freezes every year when temperatures drop in October-November, and the sea ice thaws again when solar radiation is intense and long days prevail in the early summer.
This sea ice dataset shows how long the ‘open water season’ lasts for any location in the Arctic region. The duration of open water is relevant for ecosystem and coastal processes, and human activities such as shipping, industrial development, fishing and indigenous mammal hunting.
Maps of the open water season over 1920-2100 are calculated averaging output of 30 simulations of the Community Earth System Model (CESM). This climate model describes the physical processes of the atmosphere, ocean, land surface and sea ice and their interactions. For historical times, 1920-2005 in this specific case, the model can be forced by real-world observations of incoming solar radiation and concentrations of greenhouse gasses and aerosols. For the future, 2005-2100, a scenario has to be chosen; scientists have precisely defined a suite of different scenarios called ‘Representative Concentration Pathways’. The model simulations analyzed here used the ‘RCP 8.5’ scenario, which assumes that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century.
Sea ice can be seen to cover large parts of the Arctic in the mid-20th century. For example, at that time the open water season is as short as 2 month along the Alaskan and Siberian coasts. Other parts of the Arctic Ocean remain frozen all year, such as the Canadian Archipelago, where explorers stranded in the ice many times.
Over the duration of the simulation global warming causes the open water season to vastly expand. The retreat of sea ice has started already in the late 20th century, and scientists have observed with satellites the expansion of the open water season over the last 35 years. The model predicts that by 2050, the entire Arctic coastal region will experience 60 additional days of ice-free conditions.
A longer open water season triggers coastal change, because longer exposure to waves and storm surges cause erosion of the Arctic permafrost coast. Acceleration of erosion and coastal flooding is to be expected with the expansion of the open water season. Coastal villages in Arctic Alaska may need to be better protected or relocated in the future.
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Floodplain evolution, Sediment age distribution in subsurface +
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Fluvial deposition with minimal plume and wave reworking. Note the resulting highly stratified sediment deposition. +
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Footage of the rapid outflow of water through the breach in the Mississippi River levee at Birds Point-New Madrid. On May 3, 2011 the US Army Corps of Engineers blasted a breach into the levee protecting the Bird's Point-New Madrid floodway, flooding 530 km2 of crops and farmland in Mississippi County, Missouri. The breach was induced to save Cairo, IL (population ~3000) at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi River and the rest of the levee system, from floodwaters. The breach displaced around 200 residents of Missouri's Mississippi and New Madrid counties, at the same time the city of Cairo was evacuated for safety, but remained unharmed. +
Footage of the second set of detonations applied to breach the levee at Birds Point-New Madrid.On May 3-4, 2011 the US Army Corps of Engineers blasted a breach into the levee protecting the Bird's Point-New Madrid floodway, flooding 530 km2 of crops and farmland in Mississippi County, Missouri. The breach was induced to save Cairo, IL (population ~3000) at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi River and the rest of the levee system, from floodwaters. The breach displaced around 200 residents of Missouri's Mississippi and New Madrid counties, at the same time the city of Cairo was evacuated for safety, but remained unharmed. +
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Gravity currents move over different bedform topography, ranging from a flat bed to dunes and ribs. These experiments were conducted to evaluate the capacity of gravity currents to propagate over an array of identical obstacles to entrain sediment from the loose channel bed and to carry it downstream for some distance in the form of a turbidity current.
First you can see how the structure, front velocity, energy balance and sediment entrainment capacity of a compositional gravity current is affected by the presence of the obstacles, and then you can see the effect of the shape and size of the obstacles. +
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Here we see an aerial view of the massive floodwaters draining over the coastal plain/sandur in Iceland.
This jokhulhlaup is associated with the volcanic eruption of April, 2010.
The 2nd Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in south Iceland for 2010. It started on 14.04.2010. GPS coordinates of the eruption: 63.629° N, 19.630° W. Video by Icelandic National TV station RÚV. Music by Ceiri Torjussen;
The movie show the shallow floodwater washing over the main highway of Iceland, and washing it out in several places. There was extensive damage to farm field and local houses of the debris/ash.
The shallowness of the water can also be seen from the standing waves (again). +
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Humans have manipulated rivers for thousands of years, but over the last 200 years dams on rivers have become rampant. Reservoirs and dams are constructed for water storage, to reduce the risk of river flooding, and for the generation of power. They are one of the major footprints of humans on Earth and change the world’s hydrological cycle.
This dataset illustrates the construction of dams worldwide from 1800 to the present. We display all dams listed in the Global Reservoir and Dam Database (GRanD). It includes 6,862 records of reservoirs and their associated dams. All dams that have a reservoir with a storage capacity of more than 0.1 cubic kilometers are included, and many smaller dams were added where data were available. The total amount of water stored behind these dams sums to 6,2 km3.
The red dots indicate the newly built dams and reservoirs each year, and the yellow dots represent the dams already in place.
The dams and reservoirs do not only store water, they also trap the incoming sediment that the river transports. Consequently, much less sand and clay travels to the coast, where it would normally be depositing in the delta region. The reduced sediment load of major rivers has influenced the vulnerability of many deltas worldwide.
Japan built many dams already in the early 19th century. Another early hotspot for dam construction was the US East Coast, where many medium-sized dams were constructed for grain milling and saw mills.
In the 20th century, large engineering projects developed dams in more arid regions for drinking water and irrigation water storage, and worldwide for electric power generation. Most recently, large construction projects have been completed in China, including the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. +
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Hurricane Ike developed in early September and passed over Cuba. It did heavy damage in Cuba (it was one of the most expensive hurricanes for that country ever). Ike developed in a category 2 hurricane and made landfall near Galveston, TX on September 13th, 2008.
This animation shows results of a Delft3D simulation to study the effects of Hurricane Ike (2008) on the Wax Lake delta in Atchafalaya Bay, Louisiana (USA). The model domain is 25 by 30km.
The movie shows salinity before, during and after this hurricane event.
Water in the Wax lake delta is relatively fresh, during the entire period there was continuous river discharge being fed into the delta system. The river discharge is more important during high tides and storm events when brackish water progrades into the delta then under normal conditions. This is the pulsing of the system you can see in the beginning of the simulation. Hurricane Ike pushed saline water into the delta (the red color), at the peak of the event the entire delta was submerged and the salinity approached 20-25 ppt. Note that saline water persisted long in some of the Wax lake wetlands: even on the 18th of September, 5 days after the actual landfall there is still high salinity. This had a major effect on the wetland vegetation and would kill some of the freshwater species on the islands. +
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Hurricane Rita was an intense tropical cyclone, which occurred in September 2005, a few weeks after hurricane Katrina. It was a really intense event, with high sustained winds (upto 38 m/s) and waves in the Gulf of Mexico were observed to be over 6 m high. The hurricane made landfall in Texas on September 24th, directly west of the area shown in this simulation.
This animation shows results of a Delft3D simulation to study the effects of Hurricane Rita on the Wax Lake delta in Atchafalaya Bay, Louisiana (USA). The model domain is 25 by 30km. We are showing a set of parameters of this hurricane event to compare the erosion and sedimentation that occurred cumulatively over the entire event (this animation), the water level and wave height (other animations in the EKT repository). Sedimentation or erosion of sand in the Wax lake delta is rather low under normal conditions, perhaps a few cm's transported by the fastest ebb and flood tide currents.
On September 24th 2005 hurricane Rita approaches and sedimentation and erosion become much more dramatic. When the hurricane makes landfall, the delta is inundated by 2-3 m of water and waves become as high as 1.6m. Bottom shear stress is then high and sediment can be easily transported. Note that erosion and sedimentation happen simultaneously; near the edges of channels there is rapid erosion (upto 40 cm over the entire storm), while nearby sediments are being deposited on the islands and bars. The erosion and sedimentation pattern is influenced by the exact storm track of this particular hurricane, the angle at which the waves apporach the coast determine the areas of most rapid change. +
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Hurricane Rita was an intense tropical cyclone, which occurred in September 2005. It was a really intense event, with high sustained winds (upto 38 m/s) and waves in the Gulf of Mexico were observed to be over 6 m high. The hurricane made landfall in Texas on September 24th, directly west of the area shown in this simulation.
This animation shows results of a Delft3D simulation to study the effects of Hurricane Rita on the Wax Lake delta in Atchafalaya Bay, Louisiana (USA). The model domain is 25 by 30km.
We are showing a set of parameters of this hurricane event to compare the water level (this animation), the wave height and the erosion and deposition in the delta (other animations in the EKT repository). The water level in the Wax lake delta varies with the tidal cycle in the Atchafalaya Bay, you can see the tides flooding the delta and small islands and bars emerging during low tide.
On September 24th 2005 hurricane Rita approaches and sets down the water, then the eye passes and the delta is inundated by 2-3 m of water. +
Hurricane Rita was an intense tropical cyclone, which occurred in September 2005, a few weeks after hurricane Katrina. It was a really intense event, with high sustained winds (upto 38 m/s) and waves in the Gulf of Mexico were observed to be over 6 m high. The hurricane made landfall in Texas on September 24th, directly west of the area shown in this simulation.
This animation shows results of a Delft3D simulation to study the effects of Hurricane Rita on the Wax Lake delta in Atchafalaya Bay, Louisiana (USA). The model domain is 25 by 30km. We are showing a set of parameters of this hurricane event to compare the significant wave height (this animation), the water level and the erosion and deposition in the delta (other animations in the EKT repository).
This simulation explores the effect of vegetation on the islands in the delta. In the accompanying simulation vegetation was ignored, for this particular run vegetation is introduced as a roughness coefficient (vegetation is modeled based on 'cylinders' present in the flowing water).
The wave height in the Wax lake delta is rather low under normal conditions as you can see in the beginning of the animation. At high tide, wave heights may be a few 10's of cm's. On September 24th 2005 hurricane Rita approaches and sets down the water, wave heights are then still low. But when the hurricane makes landfall closeby, the delta is inundated by 2-3 m of water and waves become as high as 1.5m. Note that the waves are highest in the main channels of the delta (because the water is deeper there). You can see the effect of vegetation is small, the waves on the islands are only dampened slightly. The effect of vegetation is not as important for waves during a hurricane as it is during some more moderate storms. +
Hurricane Rita was an intense tropical cyclone, which occurred in September 2005, a few weeks after hurricane Katrina. It was a really intense event, with high sustained winds (upto 38 m/s) and waves in the Gulf of Mexico were observed to be over 6 m high. The hurricane made landfall in Texas on September 24th, directly west of the area shown in this simulation.
This animation shows results of a Delft3D simulation to study the effects of Hurricane Rita on the Wax Lake delta in Atchafalaya Bay, Louisiana (USA). The model domain is 25 by 30km. We are showing a set of parameters of this hurricane event to compare the significant wave height (this animation), the water level and the erosion and deposition in the delta (other animations in the EKT repository). The wave height in the Wax lake delta is rather low under normal conditions as you can see in hte beginningof the animation. At high tide, wave heights may be a few 10's of cm's. On September 24th 2005 hurricane Rita approaches and sets down the water, wave heights are then still low. But when the hurricane makes landfall closeby, the delta is inundated by 2-3 m of water and waves become as high as 1.6m. Note that the waves are highest in the main channels of the delta (because the water is deeper there). +
Hurricane Rita was an tropical cyclone, which occurred in September 2005. It was a really intense event, with high sustained winds (upto 38 m/s) and waves in the Gulf of Mexico were observed to be over 12 m high. The hurricane made landfall in Texas on September 24th.
This animation shows results of a Delft3D-SWAN simulation to study the effects of Hurricane Rita. The simulations were intended to model effect on the Wax Lake delta, as small delta in Atchafalaya Bay. Louisiana, USA. To simulate details in this small region a larger grid for the entire Gulf of Mexico had to be simulate to make sure the boundary conditions for the smaller-scale experiment were accurate. This method of nesting a detailed model experiment into a large scale modeling omain is commonly needed in coastal and estuarine modeling (and in weather modeling as well).
The Gulf of Mexico hydrodynamics model is driven by yet another set of large-scale modeling and observational data on tides and driven by winds. Tides are ingested at the at the ocean boundaries based on results from the TPXO 7.2 Global Inverse Tide Model (http://volkov.oce.orst.edu/tides/TPXO7.2.html). The input for the wind field with a spatial resolution of 0.05° and a temporal resolution of 15 minutes, comes from the combination of NOAA Hurricane Research Division Wind Analysis System (H*WIND, Powell et al., 1998), and the Interactive Objective Kinematic Analysis (IOKA) kinematic wind analysis Cox et al., 1995). Lastly, bathymetry is derived from the Louisiana Virtual Coast Data Archive (http://virtual-coast.c4g.lsu.edu/), in which NOAA’s bathymetry sounding database, the Digital Nautical Charts database, and the 5-minute gridded elevations/bathymetry for the world (ETOPO5) database are combined.
Here we show the SWAN model results for the large-scale modeling domain; it is roughly 800 by 700 km. You can see how Hurricane Rita approaches as an "eye" traveling through the Gulf of Mexico. The wave heights generated due to the storm are tremendously high!
On September 24th 2005 hurricane Rita approaches the coast and wave heights break in the shallower water.
Hurricane Rita was an tropical cyclone, which occurred in September 2005. It was a really intense event, with high sustained winds (upto 38 m/s) and waves in the Gulf of Mexico were observed to be over 6 m high. The hurricane made landfall in Texas on September 24th.
This animation shows results of a Delft3D simulation to study the effects of Hurricane Rita. The simulations were intended to model effect o the Wax Lake delta, as small delta in Atchafalaya Bay. Louisiana, USA. To simulate details in this small region a larger grid for the entire Gulf of Mexico had to be simulate to make sure the boundary conditions for the smaller-scale experiment were accurate. This method of nesting a detailed model experiment into a large scale modeling omain is commonly needed in coastal and estuarine modeling (and in weather modeling as well).
The Gulf of Mexico hydrodynamics model is driven by yet another set of large-scale modeling and observational data on tides and driven by winds.
Tides are ingested at the at the ocean boundaries based on results from the TPXO 7.2 Global Inverse Tide Model (http://volkov.oce.orst.edu/tides/TPXO7.2.html). The input for the wind field with a spatial resolution of 0.05° and a temporal resolution of 15 minutes, comes from the combination of NOAA Hurricane Research Division Wind Analysis System (H*WIND, Powell et al., 1998), and the Interactive Objective Kinematic Analysis (IOKA) kinematic wind analysis Cox et al., 1995). Lastly, bathymetry is derived from the Louisiana Virtual Coast Data Archive (http://virtual-coast.c4g.lsu.edu/), in which NOAA’s bathymetry sounding database, the Digital Nautical Charts database, and the 5-minute gridded elevations/bathymetry for the world (ETOPO5) database are combined.
Here we show results for the large-scale modeling domain; it is roughly 800 by 700 km. You can see how Hurrican Rita approaches as an "eye" traveling through the Gulf of Mexico. On September 24th 2005 hurricane Rita approaches the coast and sets down the water, then the eye passes and the coast experiences a high water level of ~2 m of water due to the storm surge.
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In general, trees roots help prevent erosion from small erosion events. However, when really high winds occur, trees can be uprooted and cause a big disturbance of the soil/surface.
This video shows a tree being battered by high winds, probably near 130 km/hr, during the landfall of Hurrican Sandy. When a hurricane makes landfall wind speeds are reduced compared to the winds speed above the ocean water surface, still, the wind speeds in the coastal zone can be very high. You can see the grass mat in the backyard of a home in Long Island ripping by the shallow rooted large tree that is falling over. Not how much sediment is brought up with the root mass.
Numerical models have been designed to capture this process (a model called TreeThrow features in the CSDMS model repository). +
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In this animation global precipitation is measured in millimeters and averaged by month for a year. The shift in monthly averaged precipitation due to seasonal changes is apparent as the monsoon season comes to Western India and the Bay of Bengal region starting in June. Additionally the areas of high, year round precipitation resulting in the tropical climates can be seen and easily contrasted with the areas of little to no rain resulting in more arid climates. The global air circulation that results in the precipitation patterns seen in this movie can be seen in the Global Circulation movie. +
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Effects of high horizontal displacement rates on landscape evolution & pull-apart basins formation +
In this example, we impose over 2 millions of years a deformation field produced with Underworld over an initial flat surface (256 km square box at a resolution of 1 km). Over the deformed surface, a landscape evolution model, Badlands, is used to simulate both hillslope (creep) and overland flow processes (detachment limited) induced by an uniform precipitation rate of 1 m/yr (surface process resolution lower around 250 m).
The continuous 3D deformation field from Underworld is imported every 5000 years in Badlands as an average displacement rate (horizontal & vertical). The geodynamics model boundary conditions forces the formation of pull-apart basins. The internal structure of these basins is highly variable both in space and time owing to complex stress fields and heterogeneous crustal rheology around the termination of the delimiting faults. This complexity has led to several unresolved problems regarding the kinematics and dynamics of pull-apart basins.
Using the coupling between Badlands and Underworld it is now possible to test the time-dependent deformation patterns within pull-apart basins, and the relation of these basins with the adjacent deformed structural domains. +
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Jacobshavn Glacier is one of the largest tide-water glaciers of Greenland. It is located on the West-coast, and drains into Disco Bay.
The movie shows a calving event recorded on the 5th of June, 2007. Tremendous ice blocks calve off the active calving front of the glacier. The glacier always moves fast; at about 20m /day, and calving happens continously. Amundson et al., report 32 large events within 1 year, mostly in the period May to August.
This event is gigantic, to give an idea of scale; the calving front above water is ~100m high, below water there is another 900m hidden. The blocks that break off are about 1000m wide and a few 100m in the downflow direction. The triangular block that you see overtopple in this movie sticks 200 m out of the water! +
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Long stretches of permafrost coast in the Arctic region consist of ice-rich sediments. These permafrost areas have been experiencing rapid warming over the last decades. The warming melts the permafrost, but it also exposes the coast longer to the forces of the ocean because the sea-ice free season has expanded.
This particular simulation shows the permafrost coast near DrewPoint, along the Alaskan Beaufort Sea.
At Drew Point, there are nowadays about twice as many days of open water than in the late 1970's. The simulation calculates the distance to the sea ice edge, which is 100's of kilometers in August.
This means that storms can generate larger waves during that time of the year. Also when a storm passes and there are sustained winds, water will be 'set up' against the coast. You can see this increase in teh water level in the movie.
Absorped heat in the ocean water melts the ice in the toppled block. The bluff is approximately 4.5 m high. The block is not necessarily eroded by waves, but also just by melt ( this is called - thermal erosion). The warm sea water needs to touch the block and then rapid melt will occur. The massive block disappears in about a week. +
Long stretches of permafrost coast in the Arctic region consist of ice-rich sediments. These permafrost areas have been experiencing rapid warming over the last decades. The warming melts the permafrost, but it also exposes the coast longer to the forces of the ocean because the sea-ice free season has expanded.
This particular movie shows the permafrost coast near DrewPoint, along the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. At Drew Point, there are nowadays about twice as many days of open water than in the late 1970's. This results in more absorption of heat in the ocean water. The bluff is approximately 4.5 m high, and the block in the movies is about 13 m long. The block is not necessarily eroded by waves, but also just by melt ( this is called - thermal erosion). The warm sea water needs to touch the block and then rapid melt will occur. The massive block disappears in about a week. +
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Meteorological offices worldwide forecast ocean wave heights for the shipping and fisheries industry. In the United States, NOAA's National Weather Service provides the wave forecasts. Just like in weather forecasting, scientists run numerical models to make these predictions.
This movie shows wave height calculations of a wave model called ‘WAVEWATCH III’. The movie shows 3 hourly model output over October 1st – October 31st, 2012.
On October 22nd 2012, the storm system Sandy started forming in the Caribbean Sea and moved towards the Antilles while intensifying. By Oct 24th, Sandy became a hurricane and made landfall near Kingston, Jamaica. Passing over land weakened the storm for some time, but winds picked up and hit Cuba and the Bahamas on Oct 25th. Again, the storm system briefly weakened and then strengthened again. On Oct 29th, Hurricane Sandy took an unusual course and started curving North-Northwest and moved ashore in New Jersey, affecting New York City.
The entire storm system was exceptionally large with high winds spanning a diameter of 1800 km (1100 miles). This large diameter meant really high waves could develop.
The WAVEWATCH III simulations show that the highest significant waves were 13.7m in the open ocean. At the New York harbor entrance, where some of the highest waves have already broken in shallower water, a buoy recorded wave heights of over 9m (32 ft).
In addition to the high local waves, storm surge increases the water level during hurricanes. Increasing water levels are caused both by the low pressure associated with a hurricane and with the water being pushed towards shore and being piled up. The storm surge for Hurricane Sandy increased sea level an additional 10ft near Manhattan, making the waves more impactful and causing much coastal flooding.
High winds, rain and snow, storm surge flooding and high waves caused loss of lives and extensive damage. Over the affected countries almost 150 people were killed. In the USA alone, about 570,000 buildings were heavily damaged. Many beaches along the Eastern US seaboard were eroded by the high waves. Throughout 24 states, there were 8.6 million power outages, trains did not run anymore and 20,000 flights were cancelled. The storm caused extensive flooding in lower Manhattan
Notable Features
• The storm system Sandy traveled over the Greater Antilles, Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas and then curved back Northwest to make landfall near New York City.
• Hurricane Sandy was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record with a diameter of 1800 km.
• Wind speeds during Sandy were as high as 185 km/hr
• WAVEWATCH III calculated wave heights as high as 13.7m.
• Many lives were lost, approximately 148 people were killed in the affected region.
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Meteorological offices worldwide forecast ocean wave heights for the shipping and fisheries industry. In the United States, NOAA's National Weather Service provides the wave forecasts. Just like in weather forecasting, scientists run numerical models to make these predictions.
This movie shows wave power calculations of one of the most commonly used wave models, called ‘WAVEWATCH III®’. WAVEWATCH III® uses global and regional wind data to calculate wind-driven waves every three hours. The model also takes into account the travel of waves beyond the edges of a storm system, the waves still continue to advance even when winds are diminished. These waves decrease in steepness and are called ‘swells’ and keep traveling for large distances. Swells propagate to faraway shorelines where there is no wind.
Notable Features
During the northern hemisphere winter, the most intense wave activity is located in the central North Pacific south of the Aleutian Islands, and in the central North Atlantic south of Iceland.
During the southern hemisphere winter, intense wave activity circumscribes the pole at around 50°S, with 5 m significant wave heights typical in the southern Indian Ocean.
You can identify the areas of coast that receive high wave power, like Australia, the West-coast of Southern France, Spain and Portugal, and the West Coast of the USA.
If you see this pattern it comes as no surprise that the current engineering experiments to harvest wave energy as a source of alternative energy are in those regions (Portugal, Orkney Islands, Scotland, Oregon, USA and along the Australian coast near Perth). +
Meteorological offices worldwide forecast ocean wave heights for the shipping and fisheries industry. In the United States, NOAA's National Weather Service provides the wave forecasts. Just like in weather forecasting, scientists run numerical models to make these predictions.
Wind blowing across the ocean surface generates most ocean waves. Waves just transmit energy; the water itself does not travel with the passing of the energy. The water particles simply move up and backwards, up and forward, down and forward and finally down and backward with the passing of a wave form. This motion gives ocean waves their name: orbital waves.
This movie shows wave height calculations of one of the most commonly used predictive models, called ‘WAVEWATCH III®’. WAVEWATCH III® uses global and regional wind data to calculate wind-driven waves every three hours.
We measure wave height, H, as the distance between the wave crest and trough. Note that waves come in fields containing a large variety of heights; the wave height distribution. To describe the wave field with a single number scientists use the ‘Significant Wave Height’. The Significant Wave Height Hs, is the mean wave height of the one-third highest waves in the wave field. This measure is the closest to what a sailor on a ship would estimate as ‘the average wave height’. Apparently our eyes are drawn to see the larger waves. This movie shows the significant wave height every 3 hours, worldwide for the year 2012.
Notable Features
• During the northern hemisphere winter, the most intense wave activity is located in the central North Pacific south of the Aleutian Islands, Alaska and in the central North Atlantic south of Iceland.
• During the southern hemisphere winter, intense wave activity circumscribes the South Pole at around 50°S, with 5 m significant wave heights being typical in the southern Indian Ocean.
• In the summer and early fall, it is peak hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean, because the temperature difference between the continent and ocean is the largest. The 2012 Atlantic hurricane season was very active; there were 19 named tropical storms and hurricanes. The earliest storms happened already in May 2012.
• Hurricane Sandy was the deadliest and costliest hurricane of 2012, it formed on October 22nd 2012. In total, the 2012 storms caused 355 known fatalities and nearly $71 billion in damage.
• The highest predicted significant wave height was 17m in 2012, but much higher waves occur occasionally in the open ocean.
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Ocean conditions near Galveston, Texas shortly before the landfall of Hurricane Ike.
The swell generated by this storm event can be seen by following this link to WAVEWATCH III^TM run. The storm is visible in the Gulf of Mexico on September 13th and 14th.
https://csdms.colorado.edu/wiki/Movie:WAVEWATCH_III_model_run_Sep_2008_to_Nov_2008 +
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One can see a big block calving of a tidewater glacier front. A tidewater glacier ends in a body of water, in this case Disko Bay in Western Greenland. The ice that calves of the glacier front forms floating icebergs.
Calving happens rapidly. One can often hear a crackling or booming noise and then see the ice tumble into the ocean. The ice mass can be extremely large, and this produce significant waves.
This movie was made from a boat sailing through the fjord. +
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Overview of the tsunami affecting the bay and city of Sendai, Japan. There is footage of ships being rolled over, cars being picked up and flooding of the nearby farmfield and city.
It is estimated that the tsunami was about 3-4 m high when it hit the shoreline, and it traveled upto 10 km inland.
This tsunami was generated by a 8.9 magnitude earthquake in the Pacific Ocean on March 11th, 2011. The epicenter of the earthquake was 130km offshore of Sendai. +
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Pomme de Terre River incision/aggradation history +
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Progressive incision of tidal channel networks in a theoretical domain, which is assumed to be surrounded by channels. The initial outlet is set to be in the middl of the lower boundary, the two other inlets are determined by internal dynamics.
The water surface gradients are driving erosion, and headward incision takes place as long as local shear stress due to tidal expansion exceeds a threshold stress. +
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River meander development with respect to time in an area of relatively low slope angle. +
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Rivers draining the West Greenland Ice Sheet are highly dynamic braided rivers. The water is of a milky color, because of the glacial flour it carries in suspension. In addition, the flow velocities are high and sound of coarse, cobble-sized bedload clashing into each other at the bed is evident. Banks and bars consist of a mix of cobbles, pebbles and fine sandy to silty material. The river is shallow. +
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Sand ripple migration, shown at various speeds. The ripples are generally climbing and processes such as avalanching, scour pit formation and merging of bedforms can be seen. +
Sheet flow style bed load transportation with colored marker stones. In this form of bed load transport a portion of the bed moves as a unified sheet. +
Shore line modeling taking coastal erosion and depositional processes into account. Beach profile follows the sea level and barrier islands form during transgression. +
Shore line modeling without coastal processes. The beach profile does not migrate and barrier islands do not form. +
Shoreline Transgression & Regression. This movie shows the relationship between delta building and basin subsidence. The sediment make up of this experiment is fine grained quartz and coal sand. The lighter coal sand moves farther into the basin, acting as a proxy for finer grained sediment in real systems. Key features and events are labeled throughout the movie. +
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Simulation of ANUGA, a hydrodynamics model. This simulation used data of many rainfall gauges in the Boulder Creek watershed. It then calculated the infiltration of the water, and the remaining water drained as runoff to the main tributary streams and ultimately North and South Boulder Creek into teh Eastern Plains. There are two pulses of rainfall visible moving through the system. +
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Simulation of fluvial incision in the shelf during a glacial-interglacial sea level cycle. This simulation represents the East Coast of the US, i.e. close to Chesapeak Bay and Delaware Bay. During lowstand, at glacial maximum the entire shelf is actively incised and reworked by fluvial systems. +
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Simulation of hydrodynamics with ANUGA. +
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Simulation of river bedform by large eddy simulation (LES), and sediment as spherical particles.
Related papers are:
doi: 10.1002/wrcr.20457
doi: 10.1002/wrcr.20303
doi: 10.1029/2012WR011911 +
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Standard river plume formation without the effects of coastal processes. The the color scale shows the separation of different grain sizes where larger, heavier particles settle out first, and spread on the sea floor. +
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Subglacial discharge simulated for Gornergletscher: arrows depict discharge in the distributed system, blue shows discharge in channels. +
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The Cook Inlet, an estuary adjacent to Northern Pacific Ocean experiences very large tidal range. Dr. Mark Johnson at University of Alaska-Fairbank (UAF) and Dr. Andrey Proshuntinsky at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), applied the Finite-Volume Coastal Ocean Model (FVCOM) to this environment to better understand the dramatic tides present.
https://csdms.colorado.edu/wiki/Model:FVCOM +
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The HSTAR model is developed to investigate the morphological change in large=-scale river systems. It uses the shallow water equations and nested sediment transport and erosion algorithms to control the changes in the river due to varying water transport. The model has a unique ability to mimick the growth of vegetation on river bars that are not inundated anymore.
This simulation runs for 350 years (in modeled time) and you can see the river system evolve. First there are just mid channel bars, then a river with multiple channel treads evolves. This pattern is commonly observed in nature (for example in the Amazon Basin). You can also see bend migration and bar cutt-offs once the river system rreaches a more stable pattern. +
The HSTAR model is developed to investigate the morphological change in large-scale river systems. It uses the shallow water equations and nested sediment transport and erosion algorithms to control the changes in the river due to varying water transport. The model has a unique ability to mimick the growth of vegetation on river bars that are not inundated anymore. This simulation runs for 350 years (in modeled time) and you can see the river system evolve. This simulation is set up for a coarse-grained sediment (grainsize 0.4 mm).
In the simulation mid channel bars form and persist. This pattern is commonly observed in nature (perhaps a close example is the Brahmaputra river). You can also see bar migration, compound bar evolution (where bars are merging). New deposition happens in the leeward side of vegetated bars, where flow velocities are lower.
These simulations have a feedback between the growth of vegetation and bar accretion- the vegetated bars will experience slower flow rates and thus more sediment can settle on top of them. +
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The Rio Puerco is a major tributary to the Rio Grande in New Mexico, USA. It is presently an incised arroyo system, with ephemeral flow. Significant river flow only occurs when large rain storms hit the drainage basin, in other times of the year it is a dry river bed with stagnant pools.
The incised river valley has extensive coverage of Tamarisk Trees, an invasive species. In 2003 a section of the river system was sprayed with herbicides and vegetation died off. These simulations investigate the effect of varying vegetation coverage in the river system.
In August 2006, a large rain event occurred and a peak flow was observed at the river observation stations. The simulations show how the river water depth for those flood conditions vary at 0% vegetation, at 10% and at 20% vegetation coverage. You can see the channel system incised and with a single thread channel that meanders and then water spilling into chute channels and adjacent floodplain basins. +
The Rio Puerco is a major tributary to the Rio Grande in New Mexico, USA. It is presently an incised arroyo system, with ephemeral flow. Significant river flow only occurs when large rain storms hit the drainage basin, in other times of the year it is a dry river bed with stagnant pools. The incised river valley has extensive coverage of Tamarisk Trees, an invasive species. In 2003 a section of the river system was sprayed with herbicides and vegetation died off. These simulations investigate the effect of varying vegetation coverage in the river system.
In August 2006, a large rain event occurred and a peak flow was observed at the river observation stations. The simulations show how the sedimentation for those flood conditions vary at 0% vegetation, at 10% and at 20% vegetation coverage. You can see the channel system eroded deeply (red) in the barren river system and how both the sedimentation (in blue) and erosion (in red) is much reduced in the more vegetated floodplain. +
The Rio Puerco is a tributary to the Rio Grande in New Mexico. It is a an 'ephemeral' river, meaning that it only runs water once there are larger rainstorms in its watershed, in dry times the riverbed is dry or has only small stagnant ponds of water. The small river is incised into its old floodplain and forms a small arroyo system.
The river has been monitored already for a really long time, there has been a gauging station at teh location of the movie (at the Santa Fe railroad crossing) since 1913.
This movie shows the incised river system. You can see from the photo what the river looks like in dry conditions (April 2014). The movie shows the floodwater in the incised arroyo, the 8m-12m tall Tamarix trees barely stick out of the water. On September 15, 2015, the water even overtopped the valley and gushed into the nearby farm field, and water overflowed the highway.
As you can see, the floodwater is extremely muddy. This small river was a major sediment source into the Rio Grande in the early 20th century. It impacted the downstream reservoir at Elephant Butte. Tamarix, an invasive tree species, was introduced in the 1930's to reduce the sediment load of this river. +
The Rio Puerco is a tributary to the Rio Grande in New Mexico. It is a an 'ephemeral' river, meaning that it only runs water once there are larger rainstorms in its watershed, in dry times the riverbed is dry or has only small stagnant ponds of water. The small river is incised into its old floodplain and forms a small arroyo system. The river has been monitored already for a really long time, there has been a gauging station near the location of the movie (at the Santa Fe railroad crossing) since 1913. The flood of 2013 was exceptionally high.
This movie shows the water running in the nearby old floodplain. You can see from the photo what this location looks like in dry conditions (April 2014). On September 15, 2015, the water overtopped the incised riverbed and gushed into the nearby farm field, and water overflowed the highway.
The river water once it is in the floodplain and not in its main channel experiences more friction and flow is not as fast anymore. Still, the water has enough carrying capacity to transport fine sediment. +
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The animation shows the modeled evolution of the subglacial drainage system and associated ice sliding speed for a catchment south of Jakobshavn Isbræ (Greenland) in 2011. The left panel shows contours of the hydraulic potential and the network of channels; the right panel shows the sliding speed and channels; and the bottom panel shows the meltwater forcing. +
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The movie shows a small river confluence in Illinois. The figure shows the bathymetry and dimensions, it is a small system (~8 m wide, 0.65m deep). It is an asymmetrical confluence with concordant bed, the velocity and momentum (rQU) ratios are ~1.0. In that case, the mixing layer development is driven by difference in directions of the streams. Other simulation conditions are: - Re~166,000 (D=0.4m U=0.44 m/s), Fr=0.24 - Maximum scour depth 2.92D
In the movie, obvious eddies develop at the mixing interface, they propagate downstream, complete mixing is not reached in the simulated stretch. +
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These two movies show flow field around two common structures in rivers.
Groynes are one of the most effective approaches to stabilize eroding banks and to sustain navigable channels at proper depth. They are utilized in river bank protection as well as restoration projects (e.g., restore fish habitat in degraded streams). This movie shows the case of accidental pollution, a series of groynes can substantially modify the dispersion of the pollutant cloud in the river reach.
Bridge Pillars that support the structure change the flow field and promote local differences in sedimentation and erosion. This movie illustrates the shear stress around a bridge pier. +
These two movies show flow field around two common structures in rivers.
Groynes are one of the most effective approaches to stabilize eroding banks and to sustain navigable channels at proper depth. They are utilized in river bank protection as well as restoration projects (e.g., restore fish habitat in degraded streams). This movie shows the case of accidental pollution, a series of groynes can substantially modify the dispersion of the pollutant cloud in the river reach.
Bridge Pillars that support the structure change the flow field and promote local differences in sedimentation and erosion. This movie illustrates the shear stress around a bridge pier. +
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This animation follows global wave power as a function of waves for the months of January and February of the year 2000. +
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This animation is based on a historical flood in the Netherlands and shows the flood in the land between the Maas and Waal Rivers. As is apparent in the line graph at the bottom of the page the majority of the water came from a dike breach on the Waal River. Land elevation is shown in brown and water depth is shown in blue. +
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This animation is set up to mimick the evolution of a single channel delta forming into a marine basin with high wave climate. The incoming river sediment load goes very rapidly up over time (this is set up so as to simulate a change in climate, i.e. precipitation in the basin goes up). The parameter settings are not thought to be realistic necessarily, we are looking at an extreme case of change. Wave climate is defined as to have an incoming wave height of 1m, period of 6 s, asymmetry of incoming wave angles 0.4 (so a little weighted to the left), and a highness factor of 0.7 (higher proportion of unstable, >45 degrees, waves).
The Ebro delta is a very intriguing delta which, during recent centuries, has been controlled by both natural and man-induced factors. Deforestation of the Ebro drainage basin, by man, resulted in a fast progradation of the deltaic system until this century. Many dams were constructed along the river Ebro resulting in a drastically reduced river sediment discharge, with erosive processes now dominant in the shaping of the Ebro delta coastal area. In reality, the formation of the Ebro delta took place over 100-1000's of years. +
This animation shows results of a Delft3D simulation to study the effects of the passage of a strong cold front on the Wax Lake delta in Atchafalaya Bay, Louisiana (USA). The model domain is 25 by 30km. The movie shows cumulative erosion and deposition due to passage of a number of cold fronts in 2008.
Cold fronts pass every 4-5 days during the winter. Many of the simulations for the Wax Lake in the repository are done for hurricanes, but these particular experiments explore the effects of a cold front. They may be smaller magnitude events, but they happen many times per winter season.
It is clear that erosion and sedimentation in the Wax lake delta is in the order of centimeters per event. This November-December 2008 cold fronts cause about 5 cm of deposition at the fronts of the outermost mouthbars. There is also accumulation near bifurcations, where the flow presumably slows down.
At the same time, certain local areas experience erosion due to the cold fronts (the blue spots). +
This animation shows results of a Delft3D simulation to study the effects of the passage of a strong cold front on the Wax Lake delta in Atchafalaya Bay, Louisiana (USA). The model domain is 25 by 30km. The movie shows water level change due to passage of a strong cold front in December 2008. Cold fronts pass every 5-7 days during the winter. Many of the simulations for the Wax Lake in the repository are done for hurricanes, but these particular experiments explore the effects of a cold front. They may be smaller magnitude events, but they happen many times per winter season.
It is clear that water level changes dramatically in the Wax lake delta associated with a winter storm event. On December 9th 2008 the winter storm pushed the water onshore, causing a water level of about 1.5 m, around 3 times higher than average conditions and the entire delta became submerged. +
This animation shows results of a Delft3D simulation to study the effects of the pasage of a strong cold front on the Wax Lake delta in Atchafalaya Bay, Louisiana (USA). The model domain is 25 by 30km. The movie shows salinity before, during and after the strongest cold front of 2008. Cold fronts pass every 4-5 days during the winter. Many of the simulations for the Wax Lake in the repository are done for hurricanes, but these particular experiments explore the effects of a cold front. They may be smaller magnitude events, but they happen many times per winter season.
Water in the Wax lake delta is relatively fresh, during the entire period there is continuous river discharge being fed into the delta system. The river discharge is more important during low tide and brackish water progrades into the delta during high tides under normal conditions. This is the pulsing of the system you can see in the beginning of the simulation. This December 2008 cold front brings more saline water close to the delta (the red color). It is clear that only the outermost bars of the delta front do get affected much by the higher salinity water. It is unlikely that these short events have a major effect on the wetland vegetation, whereas the simulation of hurricane Ike (also in the repository)killed much of the freshwater/brackish water tolerant species. +
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This animation shows the global temperature fluctuation through one calendar year. Temperature is measured in degrees Celsius and is visualized using a color scale where colder temperatures are represented by colder colors (blues and greens) and warmer temperatures are represented by warmer colors (yellows and reds). Temperatures were aggregated and averaged by month and geographic location. The global shift in temperature is due to the change in seasons caused by the tilt in the earth’s rotational axis. As the northern and southern hemispheres become closer to the sun (their respective summers) the monthly mean temperature increases. +
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This animation shows the river meander development on the Allier River near Chateau de Lys, France. This recreation was made from aerial photographs and maps from the years 1946, 1960, 1980, 1982, 1992, 1995 and 1997. +
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This animations integrates the state of the art knowledge about the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet since the Last Glacial Maximum. +
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This clip is an interview with Prof. Bob Anderson, University of Colorado, it was posted in the Daily Camera, the Boulder newspaper.
Prof Anderson talks about a study on the northern coastline of Alaska midway between Point Barrow and Prudhoe Bay where the coast is eroding by 15m annually because of declining sea ice, warming seawater and increased wave activity.
A warmer Arctic with a longer sea-ice free season have led to the steady retreat of 15m average and 25m maximum a year of the 4m high bluffs --
frozen blocks of silt and peat containing 50 to 80 percent ice --. These blocks then topple into the Beaufort Sea during the summer months by a combination of large waves pounding the shoreline and warm seawater melting the base of the
bluffs. +
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This clip shows a tsunami front, loaded with debris, prograding fastly over agricultural fields and the nearby city of Sendai.
It is estimated that the tsunami was about 10 m high when it hit the shoreline, and it traveled upto 10 km inland.
This tsunami was generated by a 8.9 magnitude earthquake in the Pacific Ocean on March 11th, 2011. The epicenter of the earthquake was 130km offshore of Sendai. +
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This is a 3D model of delta growth. The initial sequence shows the growth of the delta as sediment is deposited seaward. The following sequences show cross sectional views of the formed delta. The color scale represents deposited sediment grain size where blue colors are larger grain sizes and reds are smaller grain sizes. +
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This is a coupled run of the HydroTrend River flux model and the Coastline Evolution model CEM. The run is not intended to simulate realistic conditions, but it is thought to be a proxy for the Nile delta. The simulation has two river draining to the coast; one has a wave field comming straight at it, the other wave field comes in under an angle. This results in different development; somewhat similar to the Rosetta and Damietta lobes of the Nile delta in Egypt.
For the Nile delta, the first run, kept all parameters constant as discussed above while changing only parameters found in the Wave and Avulsion component. The wave height was set to 1m, period of 6s, asymmetry of 0.4, and highness of 0.7. The avulsion component was set to have two rivers with no deviation, and was restricted to -60 and 70. This appeared somewhat similar to the real Nile with the major difference the angle of the rivers. +
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This is a high definition animation of global air circulation created by the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). It spans one calendar year and is comprised of hourly data. Cloud cover is generally shown in white with areas of precipitation shown in orange. There are many seasonal weather phenomenon visible in different regions of the globe at various times. They include monsoon seasons as well as the paths of winter storms in the northern hemisphere.
In the winter months for the northern hemisphere the storm track can be clearly seen as clouds carrying lots of moisture come south from Alaska and hit the Pacific Northwest. At the same time, in the southern hemisphere afternoon rain storms can be seen over much of South America and southern Africa.
As the seasons shift, the northward movement of the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) can be seen, bringing with it the monsoon season to India and much of the east. At the same time the US hurricane season begins. These more local events can be seen forming in the Atlantic Ocean and getting pushed towards the East Coast of the US, occasionally making land fall and bringing rain. +
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This is a local news clip from Koat News, Alberquerque, New Mexico. It documents the damage that the small town of San Francisco sustained due to the flooding of the Rio Puerco in September 2013.
The Rio Puerco is a tributary to the Rio Grande in New Mexico. It is a dryland river and has streamflow only when there is major rain fall in its drainage area. In September 2013 an exceptionally high water occured, and the Rio Puerco overtopped its arroyo system and broke a levee.
The water ran into farm fields and damaged homes and local roads. One resident shows the water level rose over 2ft in his house. +
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This is a mission statement of LOICZ, land-ocean interactions in the coastal zone. LOICZ is an international organization working on policy making for the coastal zone worldwide. +
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This is a model coupling experiment where a simple block of uplifted sediments eroded by Child are pass off to SedFlux within the CMT environment. +
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This is a movie of sea ice pushing up the small drillling island Oooguruk on June 23rd, 2009. Oooguruk is man-made, it is located just offshore the Colville delta along the Beaufort Sea of Alaska.
The island was constructed as a base for a drill platform in 2006, it sits in ~4-5 ft of water depth. Its sides are at least 4,5m above sea level and even up to 9m.
The process is called ice encroachment; both due to 'ride-up' and 'pile-up'.
The ice blocks are over 4-5m, the gravel bags armouring the island can be seen, those are larger than 2 m. The ice pushes itself higher up against the side of the island. The ice push results likely from far-field movement. Nearshore sea ice in this region stayed well into July 2009, but movement of the ice already starts much earlier. +
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This is a simulation of driftwood in flow, and investigates how the 3-D velocity field is impacted by the objects traveling in it (and bumping into each other).
The colors represent the different vector components of the 3D flow field and show how complex the flow field becomes with large trees traveling at the surface. The animation was made with the 1RICNaysCUBE 3D solver. +
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This landslide occurred directly above Preonzo in the Swiss Alps. Scientists had classified this slope as unstable, already for some time. One indicator of the instability were large tension cracks on the top of the slope. Active monitoring of the slide was ongoing, and the radar techniques had indicated the movement had accelerated shortly befor ethe event happened. Thus, fortunately, the landslide runoff zone had been cordoned off and there were no casualties.
The video actually shows the secondary movement of debris along the slope, not the failure of the rock-headwall that initiated the slide. Note that the slope is densely vegetated, the trees did not prevent this failure from happening. The last imagery shows a helicopter view of the massive haedwall scar. +
This model shows a profile view of fluvial sediment supply from river(s) over a 2000 year period. There is no alongshore or offshore transport in this model. The color scale represents grain size and is shown at the bottom of the animation. +
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This model shows a profile view of sediment transport and reworking due to the effects of plume and wave action The color scale represents grain size and is shown at the bottom of the animation. +
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This model shows a profile view of sediment transport and reworking due to the effects of plume and wave reworking. The color scale represents grain size and is shown at the bottom of the animation. +
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This movie features a debris flow originating from the steep valley walls of the Cajon del Maipo, in the Chilean Andes. The highest peaks surrounding this area are over 6000m, the slopes where the flow originated are upto ~3000m. The local slopes are steep, loose and sparsely vegetated. This is a tectonically active area and faults and folds are abundant. There is a lot of talus and loose debris sediment available, due to the young age of the Andes Mountain Range. The movie first shows an overview of the debris flow source slope.The biggest flow occurred early during the event. It shows boulders moving in a viscous mudflow. It appears the boulders are lifted of the bed. The estimated velocity of the flow was 2 m/s. The large flow built small levees and
Small side channels transport few cm-thick flow of viscous mud following existing topographic depressions. Eventually the flow reaches the main river channel running through the Cajon de Maipo. +
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This movie features the tidal bore in the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet, near Anchorage, Alaska. This tidal bore can be up to 2 metres and travels at 20 km per hour. The bore in the movie smaller than 2m (pers. comm. L'Archeveque). +
This movie features the tidal bore in the Qiantang River in China. This tidal bore is the largest in the world can be over 6 metres and travels at 40 km per hour. The bore in the movie is exceptionally high, perhaps due to ocean swells.
People gather every year to watch this spectacle. Although a few spectators did get washed of their feet, nobody was killed (as reported on the website of the USC tsunami research group).
The movie usually makes people think this is a 'tsunami', but it is not associated with any earthquakes it is an actual 'tidal wave', but it is not a 'tsunami'! +
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This movie loops through sea ice concentration in the Chukchi and Beaufort Sea. Sea ice concentration (SSC) is measured by satellites on a daily basis. SSC has been measured from 1979 onwards, and thus provides us with a relatively long time-series to assess changes in the Arctic climate. The animation loops through the year 2007, which was a relatively warm year with a low sea ice minimum.
The presence of sea ice impacts the time that waves and storm surge can affect the coast. Another parameter that affects waves and storm surge is the fetch-the distance that wind blows over open water. Here we show how we calculate each day the distance to the sea ice edge over all relevant directions (the grey lines). Then we pick the direction that the average wind direction measured at the Barrow airfield for that day and determine the fetch length (the red line). +
This movie records a typical desert flash flood event associated with an upstream rain storm. This area near the Book Cliffs has many of these channels, also called washes, that are active only during flashfloods.
There were clouds and lightening approximately 10 km's farther up the canyon, but it was sunny and clear near the canyon mouth.
The movie shows an initial load of coarser material and woody fragments. The channel is approximately 4m wide. Levees are built of woody debris as flood first passes by (best seen c. 19 sec). At least cobble sized rocks were being carried by the flow. At 34 seconds, you see standing waves formed in the flow. Flow depth was only 10 cm.
Note hydraulic jumps seen at 40 sec and 42 seconds as flow cuts across road way.
As flood subsided, we could see deposition of imbricated clasts (pers. comm Doug Jerolmack). +
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This movie shows a 11 million year simulation of the landscape evolution model DAC (Divide And Capture). It illustrates how drainage networks respond to tectonic deformation. This specific simulation has a velocity field with fault parallel horizontal movement combined with a perpendicular component and has an order of magnitude more precipitation on the western side than on the eastern side of the model domain.
The movie shows the evolution of a rectangular domain representing the Southern Alps of New Zealand at the Australian and Pacific plate boundary and the river basins that drain the Alps as motion along the Alpine Fault expands the domain.
The color code indicates elevation with red colors for higher elevation. The Alpine Fault that bounds the Southern Alps on the northwest is located at the top of the domain, and the opposing mountain front is at the bottom of the domain. The initial configuration is of a small symmetrical mountain range next to the junction of the Alpine and Hope Faults and is drained by a well-developed drainage systemtransverse to the main divide.
You can see that with the southwestward (left in the movie) expansion of the orogen, the main water divide migrates toward the Alpine Fault, the eastern basins rotate, and the western basins are constantly rearranging by area capture. +
R
This movie shows a simulation of a pair of normal-fault blocks separated by a vertical fault. The lower left edge is fixed through time, and represents a shallow shelf just below sea level. The inner block of the landscape rises at a steady rate, while the outer block subsides. Initially, the relief and erosion rate are small, and the subsiding basin is underfilled. Notice the progradation of a fan-delta complex. As relief and sediment flux increase, the fan deltas reach the shallow shelf and the basin becomes filled (or "over-filled" , meaning that there is more than enough sediment to keep filling the basin as it continues to subside). +
B
This movie shows a small part of experiment XES 99-1 on braided streams. The basin in this experiment is 3 meters wide and 6 meters long. Sediment and water enter the basin from four input sites at the top of the basin. The auto cyclic events present in the movie are labeled. They include avulsion, lateral sweeping, channel expansion events, bar migration and nickpoint retreat. +
D
This movie shows an experimental delta built into standing water (constant depth of 3 cm). All external controls are constant (sediment flux, water discharge, base level changes). Fluvial system alternates between sediment release (channelization) and sediment storage (sheet flow). +
W
This movie shows calculations of the NOAA wave forecasting model, called WAVEWATCH III®, over the Atlantic Ocean and focuses on the time period that Hurricane Katrina occurred. Hurricane Katrina formed near the Bahamas on August 23rd, 2005. It made landfall in Florida on Monday August 27th and then regained energy tracking though the Gulf of Mexico. Finally it hit the southeast Louisiana coast on Monday August 29th, 2005.
The model predicted significant waves height to be 15.4m (50.5ft) high. Indeed, waves in the eye of the hurricane were observed to be extremely high, upto 16.9m. Two buoys in the Gulf of Mexico were close to the pathway of Hurricane Katrina; one buoy capsized and last recorded waves of 10.5m, the other buoy recorded the waves throughout the passing of the storm and found significant wave heights to be 16.9m. Statistically this means that the highest waves could have been as high as 32.1 m (WMO, 1991).
The National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service predicted the hurricane track with sufficient leadtime. This prompted the Louisiana State Government, and US President Bush to declare the state of emergency beforehand. A mandatory evacuation of New Orleans was given to 1.2 million people (there was no precedent for such an out migration of an urban area in US history).
Still, Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest hurricanes in US history; 1833 people were killed. The city of New Orleans was hit hardest, because the storm surge associated with the hurricane breached the levees that protect large parts of the city from flooding. There were 53 levee breaches, and after the worst rain and wind had passed, 80% of the city and surrounding areas remained flooded.
Notable Features
• Hurricane Katrina forms over the Bahamas on August 23rd, hits Florida on August 25th.
• While Hurricane Katrina travels over the Gulf of Mexico you can see it gains strength from a hurricane category 3 to a category 5.
• It made its third landfall near the Louisiana–Mississippi border still at Category 3 intensity, this is close to the city of New Orleans.
• Storm surge was 8-9m, and caused a civil engineering disaster. Levees and floodwalls collapse at many critical locations and 80% of New Orleans was flooded.
U
This movie shows the creation of dams throughout the continental US through time. It is a geographic information systems (GIS) based map where each dam is shown in its geographic location and appears on the map in the year of its construction. The progression of settlers west and the subsequent need for water for irrigation can be seen, as can the sudden increase in dam creation as part of The New Deal economic stimulus program for hydroelectric power and flood control needs. +
G
This movie shows the snout of Variegated Glacier in Alaska. This glacier is about 20 km length and ends in Russell Fjord, a tributary fjord to Yakutat Bay. The Variegated glacier surged over about 2 yrs, in 1982-1983. The glacier is know to surge every 16-26 years!
Normal speeds are about 0.1-1 m/day. During this surge this speeded up to ~50m/day.
The movie shows a period of relative quiescence, and then a rapid speed up towards the end of the time lapse. The thickening can be observed to; a total of 110 m of thichening resulted from the surge. +
P
This movie shows the space-time distribution of discharge in a small basin in Kentucky in response to a short, spatially-uniform rainfall event. it is like seeing a hydrograph, but now visualized over the topography of a small catchment. Immediately after the rainfall event there is generally even distribution of water spatially. As the time scale progresses rainfall is concentrated in larger and larger drainages (shown in light blue and red) where it continues to flow. Towards the end of the animation the flow begins to decrease again. +
S
This show the bubbling of sand near a levee in the lowlying farmlands, the sand seepage results from the pressure gradient that is caused by high river stage in flood conditions. This example is near Bennington Levee, Indiana, where the White River was at flood stage in March 2011.
The sand boil was an indicator of the underminng of the levee and a 25 ft breach did happen during this same flood. +
L
This simulation shows a longitudinal cross-section of a low gradient delta system migrating over its shelf while sea level fluctuates. It mimics the Volga delta building out in the Caspian Sea over the last 10,000 yrs. +
T
This video shows the elevation of a river bed and surrounding surface, when as meandering 'river' migrates in a flume.
Done at the Eurotank at at Utrecht University. The meander was created by moving the water inlet to the tank.The tank used is 6 meters wide and 11 meters long.
The full experiment is described in Van Dijk et al., 2012.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JF002314/abstract +
S
Three 80 kyr simulations of soil depth in a semi-arid field site in southern Israel using the mARM4D soil-landscape evolution model (Cohen et al., 2009, 2010). The synchronized animations compare the effect of different sediment transport mechanisms on the soil-landscape evolution.
The top-left animation is when only fluvial sediment transport is simulated;
The top-right animation is when only diffusive sediment transport is simulated; and
The bottom-right is a combination of diffusive and fluvial sediment transport mechanisms. +
A
Time-lapse series of coastal bluff erosion along the Arctic Coast at Drew Point, Beaufort Sea, Alaska. Coastal erosion rates exceeding 20 meters per year are being observed along the Arctic Coast, and they are especially high along Alaska’s Beaufort Sea coastline. Comparison of aerial photos and LANDSAT imagery suggest accelerating erosion rates over the last 50 years. Arctic sea ice coverage has been declining dramatically over the last few decades and record September minima were observed in 2007. These observations suggest a causal relationship between sea ice decline and coastal change. The timelapse movies presented here show that the relative roles of thermal and wave energy may be significant. The bluffs consist of silt and have high ice-content. The thawing of the ice-rich bluffs by relatively warm seawater undermines coastal bluffs, leading to topple failures of discrete blocks defined by ice-wedge polygons. The fine-grained nature of these materials does not function as a protective barrier for incoming waves, so there is not a strong negative feedback on erosion rates, so that coastal erosion rates in this setting are likely to increase with continued Arctic warming. +
Time-lapse series of coastal bluff erosion along the Arctic Coast at Drew Point, Beaufort Sea, Alaska.
Coastal erosion rates exceeding 20 meters per year are being observed along the Arctic Coast, and they are especially high along Alaska’s Beaufort Sea coastline. Comparison of aerial photos and LANDSAT imagery suggest accelerating erosion rates over the last 50 years. Arctic sea ice coverage has been declining dramatically over the last few decades and record September minima were observed in 2007. These observations suggest a causal relationship between sea ice decline and coastal change. The timelapse movies presented here show that the relative roles of thermal and wave energy may be significant. The bluffs consist of silt and have high ice-content. The thawing of the ice-rich bluffs by relatively warm seawater undermines coastal bluffs, leading to topple failures of discrete blocks defined by ice-wedge polygons. The fine-grained nature of these materials does not function as a protective barrier for incoming waves, so there is not a strong negative feedback on erosion rates, so that coastal erosion rates in this setting are likely to increase with continued Arctic warming.
This movie was captured during the summer of 2009 looks from the sea towards the 4-5m high bluffs. A USGS research team rigged a camera on top of a pipe wedged into the seafloor about 5 to 6 meters offshore. The camera was set to photograph the coast several times every day between July 13th and August 22nd.
The movie shows the sea forming a hollow niche at the base of the bluff. Then a large chunk of the bluff fell into the sea and was washed away within 5 days, the water continued to hollow out the niche and more chunks of land toppled off the bluff. +
W
WAVEWATCH III^TM is a 2D model that evolves various atmospheric and oceanic factors creating and propagating multi spectrum wind waves through a given region. Wind waves are evolved based on the influence of surface wind, currents, water level changes, ice concentrations, air-sea surface temperature gradients and wave interactions with the sea bottom.
WAVEWATCH III^TM has been shown to be a highly accurate global wave model and has been validated globally using data from buoys and ERSI altimeter data. The error range is typically within 15% of the local mean observed height based on the altimeter and buoy data. WAVEWATCH III^TM has been shown to be particularly accurate in the tropics and in the forecast of extreme wave heights. It has been shown to have slightly poorer accuracy in selected high-latitude regions.
This animation was generated by the model WAVEWATCH III^TM and spans three calendar months. The model evolves the generation of wind waves due to the effects of surface winds. As the wind waves move out from the influence of the storm they propagate through the ocean as swell, or gravity driven waves. The model also evolves the effects of bottom interactions (including shoaling and refraction) as well as currents, water level changes and ice concentrations.
The color scale of the movies represents wave height as generated by wind activity. Areas that have high wind concentrations (storms) can be seen as they generate large swell that then propagate across oceans (shown in warmer colors). It is possible to follow the swell generated by a given storm as it propagates across the ocean and the interaction that it has with various obstructions such as islands and continents. Seasonal differences are also readily apparent in the varying size and location of the major swell generating storm events. As the seasons change, the areas where the major swell generating storms are generated change, moving north and south, following the local winter. This is represented in these movies by areas of large swell. It is also possible to see more local events such as tropical and extratropical cyclones and the effects that major currents such as the Gulf Stream have on their trajectory.
Highlighted below are some notable storm events distinguishable by their swell patters.
An increase in wave height is visible due to the effects of Tropical Cyclone Eric northeast of Madagascar on January 18th and due to Tropical Cyclone Fanele on January 20th also near Madagascar, off the coast of southeast Africa.
The large swell generated by a series of extratropical cyclones that caused damage across the British Isles and France and Spain is visible between January 17th and January 24th.
WAVEWATCH III^TM is a 2D model that evolves various atmospheric and oceanic factors creating and propagating multi spectrum wind waves through a given region. Wind waves are evolved based on the influence of surface wind, currents, water level changes, ice concentrations, air-sea surface temperature gradients and wave interactions with the sea bottom.
WAVEWATCH III^TM has been shown to be a highly accurate global wave model and has been validated globally using data from buoys and ERSI altimeter data. The error range is typically within 15% of the local mean observed height based on the altimeter and buoy data. WAVEWATCH III^TM has been shown to be particularly accurate in the tropics and in the forecast of extreme wave heights. It has been shown to have slightly poorer accuracy in selected high-latitude regions.
This animation was generated by the model WAVEWATCH III^TM and spans three calendar months. The model evolves the generation of wind waves due to the effects of surface winds. As the wind waves move out from the influence of the storm they propagate through the ocean as swell, or gravity driven waves. The model also evolves the effects of bottom interactions (including shoaling and refraction) as well as currents, water level changes and ice concentrations.
The color scale of the movies represents wave height as generated by wind activity. Areas that have high wind concentrations (storms) can be seen as they generate large swell that then propagate across oceans (shown in warmer colors). It is possible to follow the swell generated by a given storm as it propagates across the ocean and the interaction that it has with various obstructions such as islands and continents. Seasonal differences are also readily apparent in the varying size and location of the major swell generating storm events. As the seasons change, the areas where the major swell generating storms are generated change, moving north and south, following the local winter. This is represented in these movies by areas of large swell. It is also possible to see more local events such as tropical and extratropical cyclones and the effects that major currents such as the Gulf Stream have on their trajectory.
Highlighted below are some notable storm events distinguishable by their swell patters.
The swell generated from the largest tropical cyclone to strike China since 1949, typhoon Neoguri, can be seen on April 18th.
On May 3rd the increase in swell due to Cyclone Nargis is visible as it makes landfall in Yangon, Myanmar.
WAVEWATCH III^TM is a 2D model that evolves various atmospheric and oceanic factors creating and propagating multi spectrum wind waves through a given region. Wind waves are evolved based on the influence of surface wind, currents, water level changes, ice concentrations, air-sea surface temperature gradients and wave interactions with the sea bottom.
WAVEWATCH III^TM has been shown to be a highly accurate global wave model and has been validated globally using data from buoys and ERSI altimeter data. The error range is typically within 15% of the local mean observed height based on the altimeter and buoy data. WAVEWATCH III^TM has been shown to be particularly accurate in the tropics and in the forecast of extreme wave heights. It has been shown to have slightly poorer accuracy in selected high-latitude regions.
This animation was generated by the model WAVEWATCH IIITM and spans three calendar months. The model evolves the generation of wind waves due to the effects of surface winds. As the wind waves move out from the influence of the storm they propagate through the ocean as swell, or gravity driven waves. The model also evolves the effects of bottom interactions (including shoaling and refraction) as well as currents, water level changes and ice concentrations.
The color scale of the movies represents wave height as generated by wind activity. Areas that have high wind concentrations (storms) can be seen as they generate large swell that then propagate across oceans (shown in warmer colors). It is possible to follow the swell generated by a given storm as it propagates across the ocean and the interaction that it has with various obstructions such as islands and continents. Seasonal differences are also readily apparent in the varying size and location of the major swell generating storm events. As the seasons change, the areas where the major swell generating storms are generated change, moving north and south, following the local winter. This is represented in these movies by areas of large swell. It is also possible to see more local events such as tropical and extratropical cyclones and the effects that major currents such as the Gulf Stream have on their trajectory.
Highlighted below are some notable storm events distinguishable by their swell patters.
Many large swell events are visible in the Gulf of Mexico during this movie generated by hurricane events. Video footage of coastal conditions of Hurricane Ike on September 13th and 14th as it makes landfall in Galveston, Texas can be seen by following the link in the references section.
WAVEWATCH III^TM is a 2D model that evolves various atmospheric and oceanic factors creating and propagating multi spectrum wind waves through a given region. Wind waves are evolved based on the influence of surface wind, currents, water level changes, ice concentrations, air-sea surface temperature gradients and wave interactions with the sea bottom.
WAVEWATCH III^TM has been shown to be a highly accurate global wave model and has been validated globally using data from buoys and ERSI altimeter data. The error range is typically within 15% of the local mean observed height based on the altimeter and buoy data. WAVEWATCH III^TM has been shown to be particularly accurate in the tropics and in the forecast of extreme wave heights. It has been shown to have slightly poorer accuracy in selected high-latitude regions.
This animation was generated by the model WAVEWATCH III^TM and spans three calendar months. The model evolves the generation of wind waves due to the effects of surface winds. As the wind waves move out from the influence of the storm they propagate through the ocean as swell, or gravity driven waves. The model also evolves the effects of bottom interactions (including shoaling and refraction) as well as currents, water level changes and ice concentrations.
The color scale of the movies represents wave height as generated by wind activity. Areas that have high wind concentrations (storms) can be seen as they generate large swell that then propagate across oceans (shown in warmer colors). It is possible to follow the swell generated by a given storm as it propagates across the ocean and the interaction that it has with various obstructions such as islands and continents. Seasonal differences are also readily apparent in the varying size and location of the major swell generating storm events. As the seasons change, the areas where the major swell generating storms are generated change, moving north and south, following the local winter. This is represented in these movies by areas of large swell. It is also possible to see more local events such as tropical and extratropical cyclones and the effects that major currents such as the Gulf Stream have on their trajectory.
Highlighted below are some notable storm events distinguishable by their swell patters.
Throughout this movie the creation of tropical cyclones can be followed from the swell they generate as they move across the Atlantic Ocean and then get pulled north by the Gulf Stream along the east coast of the US.
On July 21st Hurricane Dolly began generating large swell in the Gulf of Mexico and can be seen making landfall near the Texas-Mexico border.
Many tropical storms can be seen as they generate swell in the Gulf of Mexico throughout August.
On August 9th the swell that earned Grant Baker the Billabong XXL award for largest wave can be seen as it hits South Africa, where he surfed it at Tafelberg Reef. Footage of this ride can be seen by following the link in the references section.
WAVEWATCH III^TM is a 2D model that evolves various atmospheric and oceanic factors creating and propagating multi spectrum wind waves through a given region. Wind waves are evolved based on the influence of surface wind, currents, water level changes, ice concentrations, air-sea surface temperature gradients and wave interactions with the sea bottom.
WAVEWATCH III^TM has been shown to be a highly accurate global wave model and has been validated globally using data from buoys and ERSI altimeter data. The error range is typically within 15% of the local mean observed height based on the altimeter and buoy data. WAVEWATCH III^TM has been shown to be particularly accurate in the tropics and in the forecast of extreme wave heights. It has been shown to have slightly poorer accuracy in selected high-latitude regions.
This animation was generated by the model WAVEWATCH III^TM and spans three calendar months. The model evolves the generation of wind waves due to the effects of surface winds. As the wind waves move out from the influence of the storm they propagate through the ocean as swell, or gravity driven waves. The model also evolves the effects of bottom interactions (including shoaling and refraction) as well as currents, water level changes and ice concentrations.
The color scale of the movies represents wave height as generated by wind activity. Areas that have high wind concentrations (storms) can be seen as they generate large swell that then propagate across oceans (shown in warmer colors). It is possible to follow the swell generated by a given storm as it propagates across the ocean and the interaction that it has with various obstructions such as islands and continents. Seasonal differences are also readily apparent in the varying size and location of the major swell generating storm events. As the seasons change, the areas where the major swell generating storms are generated change, moving north and south, following the local winter. This is represented in these movies by areas of large swell. It is also possible to see more local events such as tropical and extratropical cyclones and the effects that major currents such as the Gulf Stream have on their trajectory.
Highlighted below are some notable storm events distinguishable by their swell patters.
The large swell generated from winds gusting as fast as 129 mph can be seen between December 1st and 3rd. Certain counties affected by this storm were declared federal disaster areas.
The storm generating the swell responsible for the Billabong XXL Big Wave surfing competition is visible on and before January 5th as it makes its way towards Cortes Bank, located approximately 100 miles off the coast of San Diego, California where a 70ft wave was surfed by Mike Parsons. Still images from the ride can be seen in the link in the references section, approximately 2/3 of the way through the movie.
The large swell generated by tropical cyclone Ivan can be seen as they develop and move towards the island of Madagascar, making landfall on February 17th.
D
You can see a tilted flume with two velocity measurement propellors at the start of the movie. Note the think layer of sediment on the bttom, which represents the sea floor sediment.
Then the experimenters release a mix of water and sediment (it is colored pink for contrast) into the top of the flume. Because this mix is denser than the original water column, a density current forms and rapidly travels along the bottom slope of the flume. This current even is capable of eroding the original flume bed.This experiment mimicks the sediment transport of a turbidite along a deep-marine slope.
This experiment was implemented in the tilting flume in the Earth Surface Dynamics Modeling Lab at Caltech.
https://esp.gps.caltech.edu/earth-surface-dynamics-laboratory +
A
one can watch a month of coastal melting in one minute. This movie is a time-lapse of 15 min shots taken at Drew Point along the Beaufort Sea. Drew Point is about halfway between Point Barrow and Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope of Alaska.This particular movie was taken in August 13th-September 11th, 2010.
The coastal bluffs you see in the ovie are about 4 m high, the blocks that erode away were measured to be 10.5m long. A large volume of the permafrost is just ice (uto 70%), the rest is fine sediment and peat as well as grass that grows in the upper 35 cm (the active layer).
There are polar bears passing by! +
