Evaluación de la marea de tormenta en sitios con escasez de datos: río Pánuco, México

Abstract

Storm surge from tropical cyclones is the main cause of flood induced damage in tropical regions. Nevertheless, storm surge estimations are limited by the scarcity of measurements and historical information of tropical cyclones. This is particularly true in Mexico because data is very scarce. Thus, this research presents an alternative method for estimating storm surge values from tropical cyclones for different return periods, in areas with insufficient historical information. The selected framework consists on the implementation of hydrodynamic models to reproduce the mean sea level elevation induced by the presence of tropical cyclones on the coast. For this, we used synthetic events (120 events) generated in the Atlantic Ocean during the defined time period between 1980–2010 and limited to a 100 km circular region around the mouth of the Panuco River in Mexico (22.26°N, 97.78°W), together with historical events (25) occurring between 1951 and 2012. The wind fields of these events are used as forcing for a hydrodynamic model in order to define the maximum storm surge at the point of interest. The obtained information allows for a more reliable extreme value analysis to determine storm surge levels for different return periods. The results demonstrate the usefulness of this methodology for using synthetic events in combination with historical information, in order to increase the reliability of the design values in areas with limited data.