Britt Raubenheimer

Britt Raubenheimer
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution | WHOI · Department of Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering

About

132
Publications
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Publications

Publications (132)
Article
Full-text available
In the surfzone, breaking‐wave generated eddies and vortices transport material along the coast and offshore to the continental shelf, providing a pathway from land to the ocean. Here, surfzone vorticity is investigated with unique field observations obtained during a wide range of wave and bathymetric conditions on an Atlantic Ocean beach. Small s...
Article
Full-text available
Sea‐level change threatens the U.S. East Coast. Thus, it is important to understand the underlying causes, including ocean dynamics. Most past studies emphasized links between coastal sea level and local atmospheric variability or large‐scale circulation and climate, but possible relationships with local ocean currents over the shelf and slope rema...
Article
Full-text available
The cross‐shore transformation of breaking‐wave roller momentum and energy on observed barred surfzone bathymetry is investigated with a two‐phase Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes model driven with measured incident waves. Modeled wave spectra, wave heights, and wave‐driven increases in the mean water level (setup) agree well with field observations...
Preprint
Sea-level change threatens the U.S. East Coast. Thus, it is important to understand the underlying causes, including ocean dynamics. Most past studies emphasized links between coastal sea level and local atmospheric variability or large-scale circulation and climate, but possible relationships with local ocean currents over the shelf and slope rema...
Article
Full-text available
The behavior and predictability of rip currents (strong, wave‐driven offshore‐directed surfzone currents) have been studied for decades. However, few studies have examined the effects of rip channel morphology on the rip generation or have compared morphodynamic models with observations. Here, simulations conducted with the numerical morphodynamic...
Article
Low-frequency, many-minute-period horizontal surfzone eddies are an important mechanism for the dispersion of material, transporting larvae, pollutants, sediment, and swimmers both across and along the nearshore. Previous numerical, laboratory, and field observations on alongshore uniform bathymetry with no or roughly uniform mean background flows...
Article
The During Nearshore Event Experiment (DUNEX) was a large-scale coastal field effort focused on improving understanding of during-storm nearshore processes to ultimately develop predictive technologies, engineering solutions, and actions to enhance coastal resilience. The experiments were conducted on the North Carolina coast by a multidisciplinary...
Article
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Tropical cyclones and other extreme coastal storms cause widespread interruption and damage to meteorological and hydrological measurement stations exactly when researchers need them most. There is a longstanding need to collect collocated and synchronized measurements in areas where storms severely damage civil/coastal infrastructure. To fill this...
Article
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Ocean surges pose a global threat for coastal stability. These hazardous events alter flow conditions and pore pressures in flooded beach areas during both inundation and subsequent retreat stages, which can mobilize beach material, potentially enhancing erosion significantly. In this study, the evolution of surge-induced pore-pressure gradients is...
Preprint
Full-text available
Ocean surges pose a global threat for coastal stability. These hazardous events alter flow conditions and pore pressures in flooded beach areas during both inundation and subsequent retreat stages, which can mobilize beach material, potentially enhancing erosion significantly. In this study, the evolution of surge-induced pore-pressure gradients is...
Article
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The Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, located along the Chenier Plain in Southwest Louisiana, was the location of the sequential landfall of two major hurricanes in the 2020 hurricane season. To protect the rapidly retreating coastline along the Refuge, a system of breakwaters was constructed, which was partially completed by the 2020 hurricane season....
Article
Coastal beach aquifers are biogeochemically active systems that mediate chemical and material fluxes across the land-sea interface. This paper provides a review of major physical stressors and geologic features that influence flow and solute fate and transport in coastal beach aquifers. We outline current understanding of the interactions between t...
Article
Three years of observations of groundwater elevations, ocean tides, surge, and waves, and rainfall are used to study coastal groundwater-driven flooding along the ocean side of a barrier island. Increases in surge and wave-driven water levels (setup) during 26 ocean storms with little rainfall, including the passage of 3 hurricanes, caused O(1 m) i...
Article
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Circulation in the nearshore region, which is critical for material transport along the coast and between the surf zone and the inner shelf, includes strong vortical motions. The horizontal length scales and vertical structure associated with vortical motions are not well documented on alongshore‐variable beaches. Here, a three‐dimensional phase‐re...
Article
A number of models are available for science and engineering purposes that numerically simulate nearshore hydrodynamics and the corresponding morphological evolution. However, the models include adjustable coefficients in parameterizations for physical processes that need to be calibrated, and thus there remains room for improvement by including ad...
Article
Extreme events have significant impacts on the nearshore water-land system - where ocean, sound, and estuary processes interact with the nearby land - that pose high risk to society. Observations before, during, and after these events are critical to improve understanding of the interactions and feedbacks among the natural and built environments du...
Article
Full-text available
Storm surge resulting from oceanic extreme events, commonly tropical cyclones, is a major contributor to coastal flooding and property damage. Thus, there is significant investment in accurate predictions. However, forecasts of storm surge often are focused on regional scales, and are unable to resolve complex nearshore bathymetry and small tidal i...
Article
Full-text available
Email or send a ResearchGate Message for a copy! Abstract: Beach nourishment — the addition of sand to increase the width or sand volume of the beach — is a widespread coastal management technique to counteract coastal erosion. Globally, rising sea levels, storms and diminishing sand supplies threaten beaches and the recreational, ecosystem, groun...
Article
Model simulations using a depth-averaged ocean circulation model (ADCIRC) two-way coupled with a wave model (STWAVE) through the Coastal Storm Modeling System Coupling Framework (CSTORM-MS) are compared with observations made in the shallow, two-inlet tidal Katama Bay system on the Atlantic coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, during Hurrican...
Article
Low-frequency currents and eddies transport sediment, pathogens, larvae, and heat along the coast and between the shoreline and deeper water. Here, low-frequency currents (between 0.1 and 4.0 mHz) observed in shallow surfzone waters for 120 days during a wide range of wave conditions are compared with theories for generation by instabilities of alo...
Article
Full-text available
Low-frequency surf zone eddies disperse material between the shoreline and the continental shelf, and velocity fluctuations with frequencies as low as a few mHz have been observed previously on several beaches. Here spectral estimates of surf zone currents are extended to an order of magnitude lower frequency, resolving an extremely low frequency p...
Article
In 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria caused more than $200 billion dollars of damage in the United States, as well as the incalculable cost of the loss of life and mental trauma associated with these disasters (Sullivan 2017). In a changing climate, sea level rise and the potential for increasing tropical cyclone intensity can result in even...
Article
Surface gravity waves alter discharge and circulation near and within coastal inlets, affecting the exchange and transport of water masses, nutrients, sediments, and pollutants between inland waters and the ocean. Field observations and numerical simulations suggest that, during storms, wave forcing (radiation-stress gradients) owing to wave dissip...
Article
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Extreme storms can cause rapid morphological changes that pose high risk to society (Sallenger 2000). Semiempirical and process-based models often are used to simulate storm-induced coastal processes (Roelvink et al. 2009, Palmsten & Holman 2012, Stockdon et al. 2014, Overbeck et al. 2017). However, there are few observations of surfzone waves and...
Article
Full-text available
Storms can have long-term impacts on the groundwater flows and subsurface salinity structure in coastal aquifers. Previous studies have shown that tides, wave driven infiltration, and storm surge elevate the groundwater level within the beach (Nielsen 1999, Cartwright 2004). The resulting bulge of high groundwater propagates inland, and may cause f...
Article
Observations of water levels, waves, currents, and bathymetry collected for a month at an unstratified tidal inlet with a shallow (1 to 2 m deep) ebb shoal are used to evaluate the asymmetry in flows and dynamics owing to inertia and waves. Along-channel currents ranged from −1.5 to 0.6 m/s (positive inland) inside the main (3 to 5 m deep) channel...
Article
Observations of waves, currents, and bathymetric change in shallow water (<10-m depth) both inside and offshore of a migrating inlet with strong (2–3 m/s) tidal currents and complex nearshore bathymetry show over 2.5 m of erosion and accretion resulting from each of two hurricanes (offshore wave heights >8 m). A numerical model (Delft3D, 2DH mode)...
Article
Observations of currents, water levels, winds, and bathymetry collected for a month at an unstratified, narrow (150 m), shallow (8 m), 908 tidal inlet bend are used to evaluate an analytical model for curvature-driven flow and the effects of local wind on the cross-channel circulation. Along-channel flows ranged from 21.0 to 1.4 m/s (positive is in...
Article
The performance of a linear depth inversion algorithm, cBathy, applied to coastal video imagery was assessed using observations of water depth from vessel-based hydrographic surveys and in-situ altimeters for a wide range of wave conditions (0.3 < significant wave height < 4.3 m) on a sandy Atlantic Ocean beach near Duck, North Carolina. Comparison...
Article
Full-text available
Although rip currents are a major hazard for beachgoers, the relationship between the danger to swimmers and the physical properties of rip current circulation is not well understood. Here, the relationship between statistical model estimates of hazardous rip current likelihood and in situ velocity observations is assessed. The statistical model is...
Article
Prior studies have shown that frictional changes owing to evolving geometry of an inlet in a multiple inlet-bay system can affect tidally driven circulation. Here, a step between a relatively deep inlet and a shallow bay also is shown to affect tidal sea-level fluctuations in a bay connected to multiple inlets. To examine the relative importance of...
Article
Field-tested numerical model simulations are used to estimate the effects of an inlet, ebb shoal, wave height, wave direction, and shoreline geometry on the variability of bathymetric change on a curved coast with a migrating inlet and strong nearshore currents. The model uses bathymetry measured along the southern shoreline of Martha's Vineyard, M...
Article
Numerical models of ocean circulation often depend on parameters that must be tuned to match either results from laboratory experiments or field observations. This study demonstrates that an initial, suboptimal estimate of a parameter in a model of a small bay can be improved by assimilating observations of trajectories of passive drifters. The par...
Article
The causes of surf zone morphologic changes observed along a sandy beach onshore of a submarine canyon were investigated using field observations and a numerical model (Delft3D/SWAN). Numerically simulated morphologic changes using four different sediment transport formulae reproduce the temporal and spatial patterns of net cross-shore integrated (...
Article
To investigate the dynamics of flows near non-uniform bathymetry, single channels (on average 30-m wide and 1.5-m deep) were dredged across the surf zone at five different times, and the subsequent evolution of currents and morphology was observed for a range of wave and tidal conditions. In addition, circulation was simulated with the numerical mo...
Article
Full-text available
A 9 km-long tracer plume was created by continuously releasing Rhodamine WT dye for 2.2 h during ebb tide within the southern edge of the main tidal channel at New River Inlet, NC on May 7, 2012, with highly obliquely incident waves and alongshore winds. Over 6 h from release, COAWST (coupled ROMS and SWAN, including wave, wind, and tidal forcing)...
Article
Observations and numerical model (ADCIRC) simulations are used to quantify the changes in circulation within the evolving, shallow, two-inlet tidal Katama system, Martha's Vineyard, MA. From 2011 to 2013, Katama Inlet, connecting Katama Bay to the Atlantic, became 5 times longer, 1/3 as wide, and 1/3 as deep as the inlet migrated and rotated. This...
Article
Wave directions and mean currents observed for two 1 month long periods in 7 and 2 m water depths along 11 km of the southern shoreline of Martha's Vineyard, MA, have strong tidal modulations. Wave directions are modulated by as much as 70° over a tidal cycle. The magnitude of the tidal modulations in the wavefield decreases alongshore to the west,...
Article
Observations of waves and setup on a steep, sandy beach are used to identify and assess potential applications of spatially dense lidar measurements for studying inner-surf and swash-zone hydrodynamics. There is good agreement between lidar- and pressure-based estimates of water levels (r2 = 0.98, rmse = 0.05 m), setup (r2 = 0.92, rmse = 0.03 m), i...
Article
Full-text available
The relationship between synthetic aperture radar (SAR) signatures of depth-limited breaking waves and wave height is studied. Wave height is estimated from SAR images using an empirically derived relationship that exploits the azimuthal shift in SAR images associated with moving scatterers. This relationship is derived from in situ measurements ra...
Article
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Material transport and dispersion near the mouth of a tidal inlet (New River Inlet, NC) are investigated using GPS-tracked drifters and numerical models. For ebb tide releases, velocities are largest (>1 ) in two approximately 30 wide channels that bisect the 1–3 m deep ebb shoal. In the channels, drifter and subsurface current meter velocities are...
Article
The interactions between waves, tidal currents, and bathymetry near New River Inlet, NC, USA are investigated to understand the effects on the resulting hydrodynamics and sediment transport. A quasi-3-D nearshore community model, NearCoM-TVD, is used in this integrated observational and modeling study. The model is validated with observations of wa...
Article
Often, there is an order of magnitude more fecal indicator bacteria (enterococci) in beach sand than in nearby water. Consequently, sand is considered a reservoir for these bacteria, potentially contributing to poor water quality, and raising questions regarding the human health risks associated with sand exposure. An integral aspect of the distrib...
Article
Alongshore force balances, including the role of nonlinear advection, in the shoaling and surf zones onshore of a submarine canyon are investigated using a numerical modeling system (Delft3D/SWAN). The model is calibrated with waves and alongshore flows recorded over a period of 1.5 months at 26 sites along the 1.0-, 2.5-, and 5.0-m depth contours...
Article
Full-text available
The time and space variability of wave transformation through a tidal inlet is investigated with radar remote sensing. The frequency of wave breaking and the net wave breaking dissipation at high spatial resolution is estimated using image sequences acquired with a land-based X-band marine radar. Using the radar intensity data, transformed to norma...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Radar has the potential to enable temporally and spatially dense, continuous monitoring of waves and currents in nearshore environments. If quantitative relationships between the remote sensing signals and the hydrodynamic parameters of interest can be found, remote sensing techniques can mitigate the challenges of continuous in situ sampling and p...
Conference Paper
El trabajo que presentamos tiene por objetivo demostrar la viabilidad de utilizar datos obtenidos mediante un radar de navegación para evaluar la variabilidad espacio-temporal del oleaje rompiente en ambiente costero, de morfología compleja y dominado por mareas. Los datos que utilizamos fueron adquiridos durante una campaña de mediciones intensiva...
Article
Observations of water levels, winds, waves, and currents in Katama Bay, Edgartown Channel, and Katama Inlet on Martha׳s Vineyard, Massachusetts are used to test the hypothesis that wave forcing is important to circulation in inlet channels of two-inlet systems and to water levels in the bay between the inlets. Katama Bay is connected to the Atlanti...
Article
Downslope gravity-driven sediment transport smooths steep nearshore bathymetric features, such as channels, bars, troughs, cusps, mounds, pits, scarps, and bedforms. Downslope transport appears approximately as a diffusive term in the sediment continuity equation predicting changes in bed level, with a morphological diffusivity controlling the rate...
Article
Observations of waves, flows, and water levels collected for a month in and near a long, narrow, shallow (~ 3000 m long, 1000 m wide, and 5 m deep), well-mixed ocean inlet are used to evaluate the subtidal (periods > 30 hrs) along-inlet momentum balance. Maximum tidal flows in the inlet were about 1.5 m/s and offshore significant wave heights range...
Article
Full-text available
Surfzone bathymetry often is resolved poorly in time because watercraft surveys cannot be performed when waves are large, and remote sensing techniques have limited vertical accuracy. However, accurate high-frequency bathymetric information at fixed locations can be obtained from altimeters that sample nearly continuously, even during storms. A met...
Article
Full-text available
The goal of this study is to investigate the role of wave-current interaction in tidal inlet hydrodynamics. A quasi-3D nearshore community model, NearCoM-TVD, is used to simulate circulation and waves at New River Inlet, NC, USA. Model skill for waves and circulation is evaluated at about 30 locations throughout the inlet, including a recently dred...
Article
Estuarine systems range from highly stratified to well mixed, often passing through several states during a single tidal cycle. Here, the processes driving temporal and spatial variations of stratification are investigated on the broad, shallow, periodically inundated tidal flats (shoals) between the north and south forks of the Skagit River. Over...
Article
Tidal flats with limited vegetation provide valuable opportunities to investigate the linkages of hydrodynamics and sediment dynamics. A mudflat in southern Willapa Bay and a sandflat in Skagit Bay (both Washington state, USA) are characterized by processes with many similarities, but some differences. In particular, one imports mud and the other e...
Article
Wind speeds and directions measured in June, July, and August, 2009 at 5 locations separated by up to about 5 km on the Skagit tidal flats (near La Conner, WA) are compared with predictions of a triple-nested Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model with 1.3-km resolution. The model predicts the observed diurnal fluctuations of the wind speeds (bi...
Article
Observations and third-generation wave model hindcasts of ocean surface gravity waves propagating across the Louisiana shelf show that the effects of the mud environment on wave evolution are complex and episodic. Whereas low-frequency waves (0.04–0.20 Hz) show a consistent decay similar to earlier studies, the presence of mud also appears to suppr...
Article
Eddies and vortices associated with breaking waves rapidly disperse pollution, nutrients, and terrestrial material along the coast. Although theory and numerical models suggest that vorticity is generated near the ends of a breaking wave crest, this hypothesis has not been tested in the field. Here we report the first observations of wave-generated...
Article
Full-text available
Water oscillations observed in a 10-m-diameter, 2-m-deep hole excavated on the foreshore just above the low-tide line on an ocean beach were consistent with theory. When swashes first filled the initially circular hole on the rising tide, the dominant mode observed in the cross-shore velocity was consistent with a zero-order Bessel function solutio...
Article
The Swashzone Fellowships funded by the CAREER program were designed to provide sufficient time for undergraduates with little knowledge of ocean processes and minimal prior research experience to participate in observational nearshore oceanographic studies. The fellows learned background material, developed hypotheses, planned field experiments, d...
Article
Bacterial pathogens in coastal sediments may pose a health risk to users of beaches. Although recent work shows that beach sands harbor both indicator bacteria and potential pathogens, it is not known how deep within beach sands the organisms may persist nor if they may be exposed during natural physical processes. In this study, sand cores of appr...
Article
SWAN model predictions, initialized with directional wave buoy observations in 550-m water depth offshore of a steep, submarine canyon, are compared with wave observations in 5.0-, 2.5-, and 1.0-m water depths. Although the model assumptions include small bottom slopes, the alongshore variations of the nearshore wave field caused by refraction over...
Article
Channels affect drainage and bed stresses on tidal flats. Here, near-bottom currents observed on a sandy tidal flat are compared with those observed 35 m away inside a shallow (&ap; 0.3 m deep) channel. For water depths between 0.5 and 2.5 m (when both current meters are submerged), current speeds 0.13 m above the bed on the flat are about 30% grea...
Conference Paper
The evolution of 2-m deep, 10-m diameter holes excavated in the inner surfzone on an energetic beach was monitored with a downward-looking current profiler at the center of each hole, a surfboard-mounted GPS-sonar survey system, and tall divers with graduated poles, tape measures, marked lines, and long arms. Waves and currents were measured with u...
Article
Ocean surface gravity waves are attenuated as they propagate across muddy regions of continental shelves and coastal areas. However, the details of the wave-mud interaction process are not understood well, and thus it is unclear how these effects can best be represented in operational wave and circulation models. To improve our understanding of the...
Article
On the Skagit Bay tidal flats, the stratification resulting from the buoyancy input of the Skagit River is modulated by tides with a 4 m range. Here, field observations and Finite Volume Coastal Ocean Model (FVCOM) simulations are used to evaluate the terms in the equation governing the temporal evolution of the stratification-induced potential ene...
Article
The time dependent position of the run-up (the intersection of the shoreward edge of the water and the beach face), the maximum run-up, and the run-up duration measured with a terrestrial lidar will be compared with predictions of a ballistic model including friction (Holland and Puleo, J. Geophys. Res., 106(C3), 2001). Cross-shore water surface pr...
Article
Wind speeds and direction measured during July and August, 2009, at 4 locations separated by up to about 10 km on the Skagit River tidal flats (near La Conner, WA) will be compared with predictions of a triple-nested Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model with roughly 400 m resolution. Correlations between both wind speeds and directions measure...
Conference Paper
Vertically polarized backscattered power, Doppler velocity, and interferometric height were measured in the nearshore ocean region using a high-resolution imaging microwave radar. The interferometric surface displacement measurements are compared with normalized radar cross sections (NRCS) and Doppler velocities, and with in situ pressure sensor es...
Conference Paper
The subtidal circulation over a muddy seafloor on the Louisiana Chenier-Plain coast is investigated using pressure and velocity measured for twenty days in about two and one half meters water depth. In contrast to sandy coasts, which erode during storms, prior Chenier-Plain studies in five to twenty meters water depth suggest that mud is transporte...