USGS Researchers Join Collaborators at National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) Hurricane Coastal Impacts Project Meeting

The National Oceanic Partnership Program (NOPP) Hurricane Coastal Impacts project was formed to improve predictions of coastal impacts from landfalling hurricanes by providing more detailed observations of boundary conditions, offshore forcings, and coastal impacts, which reduce the uncertainties in the numerous steps within the offshore-to-onshore prediction process and provide ground-truth data to validate the models. The goal of the project was to bring together experts in remote sensing, in situ observations and numerical modeling to collaboratively observe and forecast landfalling hurricanes, ultimately working to improve forecasts of hurricane coastal impacts that can be used to serve and protect coastal communities. Work performed by USGS project members included providing remotely sensed elevation and landcover maps as model input, nearshore water level and wave measurements to validate model output, and developing and running various numerical models to predict hurricane coastal impacts. The 2024 hurricane season was the last year of data collection for the project, and team members met in Gainesville, Florida on November 19-21, 2024, to discuss the outcomes of the project and future research directions. The vast expertise of USGS in coastal science was represented with researchers from the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Ecosystems Mission Area, Water Mission Area, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center (WARC) and Coastal/Marine Hazards and Resources Program (CMHRP) in attendance.