@article{moulton_zambon_xue_warner_bao_yin_defne_he_hegermiller_2024, title={Modeled Coastal-Ocean Pathways of Land-Sourced Contaminants in the Aftermath of Hurricane Florence}, volume={129}, ISSN={["2169-9291"]}, url={https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JC019685}, DOI={10.1029/2023JC019685}, abstractNote={Extreme precipitation during Hurricane Florence, which made landfall in North Carolina in September 2018, led to breaches of hog waste lagoons, coal ash pits, and wastewater facilities. In the weeks following the storm, freshwater discharge carried pollutants, sediment, organic matter, and debris to the coastal ocean, contributing to beach closures, algae blooms, hypoxia, and other ecosystem impacts. Here, the ocean pathways of land‐sourced contaminants following Hurricane Florence are investigated using the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) with a river point source with fixed water properties from a hydrologic model (WRF‐Hydro) of the Cape Fear River Basin, North Carolina's largest watershed. Patterns of contaminant transport in the coastal ocean are quantified with a finite duration tracer release based on observed flooding of agricultural and industrial facilities. A suite of synthetic events also was simulated to investigate the sensitivity of the river plume transport pathways to river discharge and wind direction. The simulated Hurricane Florence discharge event led to westward (downcoast) transport of contaminants in a coastal current, along with intermittent storage and release of material in an offshore (bulge) or eastward (upcoast) region near the river mouth, modulated by alternating upwelling and downwelling winds. The river plume patterns led to a delayed onset and long duration of contaminants affecting beaches 100 km to the west, days to weeks after the storm. Maps of the onset and duration of hypothetical water quality hazards for a range of weather conditions may provide guidance to managers on the timing of swimming/shellfishing advisories and water quality sampling.}, number={3}, journal={JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-OCEANS}, author={Moulton, Melissa and Zambon, Joseph B. and Xue, Z. George and Warner, John C. and Bao, Daoyang and Yin, Dongxiao and Defne, Zafer and He, Ruoying and Hegermiller, Christie}, year={2024}, month={Mar} }
 @article{bao_xue_warner_moulton_yin_hegermiller_zambon_he_2022, title={A Numerical Investigation of Hurricane Florence-Induced Compound Flooding in the Cape Fear Estuary Using a Dynamically Coupled Hydrological-Ocean Model}, volume={14}, ISSN={["1942-2466"]}, url={https://doi.org/10.1029/2022MS003131}, DOI={10.1029/2022MS003131}, abstractNote={Hurricane‐induced compound flooding is a combined result of multiple processes, including overland runoff, precipitation, and storm surge. This study presents a dynamical coupling method applied at the boundary of a processes‐based hydrological model (the hydrological modeling extension package of the Weather Research and Forecasting model) and the two‐dimensional Regional Ocean Modeling System on the platform of the Coupled‐Ocean‐Atmosphere‐Wave‐Sediment Transport Modeling System. The coupled model was adapted to the Cape Fear River Basin and adjacent coastal ocean in North Carolina, United States, which suffered severe losses due to the compound flood induced by Hurricane Florence in 2018. The model's robustness was evaluated via comparison against observed water levels in the watershed, estuary, and along the coast. With a series of sensitivity experiments, the contributions from different processes to the water level variations in the estuary were untangled and quantified. Based on the temporal evolution of wind, water flux, water level, and water‐level gradient, compound flooding in the estuary was categorized into four stages: (I) swelling, (II) local‐wind‐dominated, (III) transition, and (IV) overland‐runoff‐dominated. A nonlinear effect was identified between overland runoff and water level in the estuary, which indicated the estuary could serve as a buffer for surges from the ocean side by reducing the maximum surge height. Water budget analysis indicated that water in the estuary was flushed 10 times by overland runoff within 23 days after Florence's landfall.}, number={11}, journal={JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN MODELING EARTH SYSTEMS}, author={Bao, Daoyang and Xue, Z. George and Warner, John C. C. and Moulton, Melissa and Yin, Dongxiao and Hegermiller, Christie A. A. and Zambon, Joseph B. B. and He, Ruoying}, year={2022}, month={Nov} }
 @article{zambon_he_warner_hegermiller_2021, title={Impact of SST and Surface Waves on Hurricane Florence (2018): A Coupled Modeling Investigation}, volume={36}, ISSN={0882-8156 1520-0434}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/WAF-D-20-0171.1}, DOI={10.1175/WAF-D-20-0171.1}, abstractNote={Hurricane Florence (2018) devastated the coastal communities of the Carolinas through heavy rainfall that resulted in massive flooding. Florence was characterized by an abrupt reduction in intensity (Saffir-Simpson Category 4 to Category 1) just prior to landfall and synoptic-scale interactions that stalled the storm over the Carolinas for several days. We conducted a series of numerical modeling experiments in coupled and uncoupled configurations to examine the impact of sea surface temperature (SST) and ocean waves on storm characteristics. In addition to experiments using a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean-wave model, we introduced the capability of the atmospheric model to modulate wind stress and surface fluxes by oceanwaves through data from an uncoupled wave model. We examined these experiments by comparing track, intensity, strength, SST, storm structure, wave height, surface roughness, heat fluxes, and precipitation in order to determine the impacts of resolving ocean conditions with varying degrees of coupling. We found differences in the storm’s intensity and strength, with the best correlation coefficient of intensity (r=0.89) and strength (r=0.95) coming from the fully-coupled simulations. Further analysis into surface roughness parameterizations added to the atmospheric model revealed differences in the spatial distribution and magnitude of the largest roughness lengths. Adding ocean andwave features to the model further modified the fluxes due to more realistic cooling beneath the stormwhich in turn modified the precipitation field. Our experiments highlight significant differences in how air-sea processes impact hurricane modeling. The storm characteristics of track, intensity, strength, and precipitation at landfall are crucial to predictability and forecasting of future landfalling hurricanes.}, number={5}, journal={Weather and Forecasting}, publisher={American Meteorological Society}, author={Zambon, Joseph B. and He, Ruoying and Warner, John C. and Hegermiller, Christie A.}, year={2021}, month={May}, pages={1713–1734} }