Sensitivity Study of Wind Drag

Coefficient on Surge Modelling

for Tropical Cyclone

C. Gowri Shankar , Manasa Ranjan Behera and P. Vethamony

Abstract The Bay of Bengal (BoB) is the breeding ground for the tropical cyclones,
accompanied by very strong winds, torrential rains and storm surges with severe
intensity during the pre- and post-monsoon seasons. Modelling this storm surge is
involved with many uncertainties; among those, the wind stress (associated with wind
drag coefficient, C d ) over ocean surface is a crucial surface forcing and a thriving
factor. The present study examines the sensitivity of C d that was used to simulate
storm surge in the BoB region using the coupled ADCIRC and SWAN model. In
general, ADCIRC uses the formulation of Garratt [1] and SWAN uses that of Wu [2]
to evaluate C d . Both these relations are empirical, and C d increases linearly with wind
speed. Hence, cut-off values (C d cap) are proposed for C d , ranging from 2.0 × 10−3
to 3.5 × 10−3 and a no-cap condition in SWAN. The simulations were performed
for cyclone ‘Vardah’, and significant wave heights, surge heights and landfall time
were computed. Results show that the parameters estimated through the cut-off C d
values reasonably match with the observed values than the no-cap case. The results
and analysis interpreted from the current study will be used on a significant scale to
understand and determine the sensitive behaviour of C d for very high wind speeds
of a tropical cyclonic condition.

Keywords Storm surge · Wind stress · ADCIRC·SWAN · Drag coefficient

Significant wave height

C. Gowri Shankar (B) · M. R. Behera · P. Vethamony

Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, 400076
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
e-mail: gowrishankar1805@gmail.com
M. R. Behera
e-mail: manasa.rb@iitb.ac.in
P. Vethamony
e-mail: vethamony@iitb.ac.in

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 813

K. Murali et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference in Ocean
Engineering (ICOE2018), Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering 22,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3119-0_54
814 C. Gowri Shankar et al.

1 Introduction

Among all the natural hazards, storm surges remain as the world’s leading ones,
especially due to their frequent occurrences in many coastal regions and heavy loss
of life, property and damage to coastal structures. The extensive coastline of India
(≈7500 km), especially the east coast of India, is suffering from the effect of storms
in varying degrees. Some of the devastating cyclones and the associated storm surges
over the east coast of India and Bangladesh coast show the propensity and destructive
violence of cyclones emanating from the Bay of Bengal. Although only about seven
per cent of the global tropical cyclones occurs in the northern Indian Ocean, they are
the deadliest in the world. Factors like the shallow waters of the Bay of Bengal, the
low and flat coastal terrain of India and Bangladesh and the funnel-shaped coastline
combinations tend to produce intensive surges. The most severe cyclone-related
event in the recorded history, with respect to inundation and loss of life, occurred in
Bangladesh in November 1970 which produced a maximum surge height of ~10 m,
and the loss of life was estimated to be 300,000–500,000 [3]. The October 1999
cyclone that hit the Orissa coast of India produced a 7.5 m surge [4]. Around the
globe nearly one billion people and in India almost 14% of the population have their
habitats along the coastline and are vulnerable to such extreme sea-level events. Thus,
forecasting, modelling and prediction of such events would be of great interest in
safeguarding the lives and interest of the nation.
Numerical storm surge modelling has always been a challenging task and had
taken a few decades to come to this stage of development. It involves several input
parameters such as wind velocity, central pressure of the cyclone, local bathymetry,
tidal input and wave stress gradients. These input parameters are collected and gen-
erated through field observations and models, and then given as input to surge model
for simulating vertical surge height and inundation levels. A comprehensive review
of such studies is reported in [5–7]. It is a well-known fact that ocean currents and
waves are driven by momentum fluxes across the air–sea interface. The bulk formula
that calculates boundary layer parameterisations uses either roughness length Z 0 or
drag coefficient, C d for the cyclonic storm surge models [e.g. Sea, Lake and Overland
Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) by NOAA [8] for surge and Advanced Circulation
Multidimensional Hydrodynamic Model (ADCIRC) [9, 10] and the Finite Volume
Coastal Ocean Model (FVCOM) [11, 12] for surge and waves]. The present study
investigates the sensitivity of the drag coefficient parameter by modifying its cut-off
values used in the current storm surge and wave models. To execute the same, the
very severe cyclonic storm (VSCS) that hit the east coast of India (Tamil Nadu)
cyclone ‘Vardah’ was considered, and simulations were performed. Cyclone Vardah
formed as a depression in the morning hours of 6 December 2016 over the south-east
Bay of Bengal, and lay centred approximately 8.5°N; 91.0°E (about 1320 km south-
south-east of Visakhapatnam, 1360 km south-south-east of Gopalpur and 210 km
west-south-west of Car Nicobar). The system intensified into a ‘deep depression’
after 33 h with wind speed exceeding 14 ms−1 and transformed into a ‘cyclonic
storm’ (wind speed crossed 17 ms−1 ) at 0030 UTC on 8 December 2016. Further it
Sensitivity Study of Wind Drag Coefficient on Surge … 815

intensified into a severe and very severe cyclonic storm at 1200 UTC on 10 Decem-
ber 2016. Vardah attained its maximum intensity of 36 ms−1 and made its landfall
around 0900 to 1130 UTC on 12 December 2016 near Chennai. Vardah reduced to a
severe cyclonic storm (SCS) just before making its landfall and moved westwards by
dissipating its intensity into a depression and finally as a low-pressure system. The
havoc caused by Vardah to the coastal structures and properties was enormous. It
was observed that a maximum of 1 m height of storm surges above the astronomical
tide inundated the coastal stretches of Ennore, Chennai and Thiruvallur districts of
Tamil Nadu and Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh.

2 Model Description

The present study uses the coupled hydrodynamic (circulation) and wave model
(ADCIRC and SWAN) for the simulation of storm surge and its corresponding waves.
ADCIRC model was developed through the combined efforts of the Engineering
Research and Development Centre (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)), Uni-
versity of Notre Dame and University of North Carolina. Through the axis of rotating
coordinate system, the model is solving for the moving fluid with the equation of
motion. Finite element method and finite difference method are adopted to discretize
the governing equations in space and time, respectively, which was formulated using
Boussinesq approximation.
The current version of ADCIRC used in the present study is highly capable to
run with two-dimensional depth-integrated (2DDI) mode on a flexible unstructured
grid. The model solves the vertically integrated continuity equation and vertically
integrated momentum equations for water surface elevation (ζ) and currents, respec-
tively [13], with a sophisticated algorithm for wetting and drying that activates and
deactivates the entire grid elements during inundation and recession of coastal topog-
raphy [10]. The model requires wind and pressure fields and tidal forcing along open
ocean boundary as essential inputs. Simulating Waves Nearshore (SWAN) is a third-
generation wave model that was developed at the Delft University of Technology,
The Netherlands. It is governed by the action balance equation with phase averag-
ing analogue Gauss-Siedel sweeping algorithm technique to propagate wave action
density spectrum on an unstructured mesh [14]. SWAN describes the waves with the
two-dimensional wave action density spectrum, even when nonlinear phenomena
dominate (e.g. in the surf zone). The latest version of SWAN 41.10 has been used in
this study, coupled with ADCIRC to simulate surges and waves for cyclone Vardah.
When the coupling is initiated, ADCIRC runs first using radiation stresses of SWAN
from the previous interval to extrapolate the wave forcing forwards in time. When
the time steps of the coupling interval is complete, ADCIRC passes on the wind
velocity, water levels, currents and roughness length to SWAN. The gradient of each
element will be projected to the vertices considering the area-weighted average of
gradients from elements adjacent to each vertex [10].
816 C. Gowri Shankar et al.

3 Model Composition and Implementation

The simulations were carried out for the east coast of India, where it is encircled
by the Bay of Bengal basin. The domain starts in the north from southern Andhra
Pradesh coast (Kavali) and extends in the south till Vedaranyam (Tamil Nadu coast)
as shown in Fig. 1. The total length of the inland boundary is approximately 570 km,
while the offshore extent to the open ocean boundary is about 600 km. Storm surges
are well known for its complexity in simulation, and hence, a finite element grid was
generated with a fine spatial resolution along the coast (~100 m) and increases to a
coarse grid (~20 km) in the offshore extent [15, 16].
A coarse grid has been chosen for the offshore region because of its large bathy-
metric depths for longer extents that makes the geometry simpler to solve. The total
number of triangular elements and nodes in the mesh are 340,221 and 172,854,

Fig. 1 Study area with a finite element mesh and rectangular open ocean boundary
Sensitivity Study of Wind Drag Coefficient on Surge … 817

respectively, with a rectangular offshore boundary connecting to the mainland. A

rectangular-shaped boundary was preferred over a semi-circular-shaped boundary
(although the number of nodes and computational time would be less) because of its
computational stability along the corner node points. The gridded bathymetry used
for the current study was obtained from the open source database General Bathy-
metric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) which comes under the division of British
Oceanographic Data Centre. GEBCO’s bathymetry is the finest spatial resolution
available currently with a global grid of 30 arc second data as represented in Fig. 2
for the current study domain.

Fig. 2 Spatial extent of the bathymetry for the model domain (in m)
818 C. Gowri Shankar et al.

3.1 Methodology

Wind stress component is completely dependent on the factor, wind drag coefficient
(C d ). Most of the storm surge models use either a linearly increasing C d or a fast
increasing C d as the wind speed increases. However, the trend was found to be
different from the recent field, laboratory, theoretical and numerical studies that
show a levelling-off or even a decreasing C d at high wind speeds. Both ADCIRC and
SWAN use a linear relationship to calculate the drag coefficient that was developed
by Garratt [1] and Wu [2], respectively. A cut-off value has been introduced to the
drag coefficient, as these models tend to give unrealistic values at very high wind
speeds besides using a linear relation. In earlier studies, the cut-off value for the
hydrodynamic model was fixed at 0.002, and now, it has been reformed to 0.0035
for better predictions. However, to understand the sensitivity of this drag coefficient
in the storm surge model, the cut-off values were set to 0.002, 0.0025, 0.0030 and
0.0035 for the coupled model.
The model inputs required for the simulations are bathymetry data, cyclone best
track (that includes the location of the cyclone w.r.t its wind intensity and central
pressure) and tidal potential constituents. As earlier stated, the bathymetry data was
imported to the model from GEBCO with 30 arc second resolution with reference
to the study domain, and six tidal constituents (K1, M2, N2, O1, P1 and S2) were
prescribed at the open ocean boundary. These six tidal constituents were only used
as they portray the true tidal field that exists in the Bay of Bengal basin [16]. The
phase and amplitude of the six tidal constituents synchronize with model start time
(i.e. 6 Z of 6 December 2016) at the open ocean boundary and progress ahead with
time into the nearshore areas. Cyclone Vardah’s best track details were obtained from
Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) and imposed to the study area as shown in
Fig. 2. The best track data avails information like coordinates of the cyclone position
(latitude and longitude), maximum wind intensity and central pressure along the
cyclone’s path at every 6 h interval to the model. The coordinate system was set to
spherical with a cold start, and a constant quadratic bottom friction coefficient (C b 
0.0028) was used. The wetting and drying scheme was also enabled by assigning the
minimum water depth and minimum velocity for wetting to 0.05 [17]. The weighting
factor that relates to the relative contribution of primitive and wave portions in Gen-
eralized Wave Continuity Equation (GWCE) was set to 0.005. The simulation was
for a total of 7 days (6–13 December 2016) with a ramp function set to 1 day that is
the spin-up time taken by the model. The time step for the current simulations was
assigned to 2.0 s which was correlated with the Courant number. The recommended
value for Courant number is 1.0 [18] and thus should not exceed the same.
A high performance computing (HPC) cluster IBM 7915-x3650 M4 system with
a processor clock speed of 1200 MHz was used to perform the model simulations. All
the three nodes with 24 processors were used since the model has a very fine resolu-
tion (approximately 100 m) along the nearshore regions. Totally, eight virtual probe
stations were set, out of which six are along the coastline (Nellore, Krishnapatnam,
Ennore, Chennai, Pondicherry (Puducherry) and Nagapattinam) to capture the surge
Sensitivity Study of Wind Drag Coefficient on Surge … 819

Fig. 3 Virtual probe locations along the study domain to measure the surge and significant wave
height

and two buoy stations within the study domain (deep water moored buoy—BD11
and shallow water buoy—wave rider buoy Pondicherry (WRBP)) as represented in
Fig. 3. The two buoy locations, namely BD11 and WRBP, are situated approximately
300 km north-east and 150 km south, respectively, from the cyclone’s landfall point.
The output, recorded with a time step of 30 min interval from the model simulations,
was used for the final analysis.

4 Results and Discussion

The model was simulated and recorded under different case scenarios that are men-
tioned in the previous sections. The outputs simulated by the coupled model are
the total water-level elevations, wind velocity and atmospheric pressure (ADCIRC),
radiation stress gradients, significant wave heights, mean wave directions, mean
wave periods and peak wave periods (SWAN) at all the nodal points. As stated,
there were six virtual probe stations fixed along the nearshore (coastline) areas to
820 C. Gowri Shankar et al.

record the water-level elevations. These six probe stations were fixed with reference
to the cyclone track, two stations to the northern side of the cyclone, two stations
in the near vicinity of the landfall point and two stations on the southern side of the
cyclone as shown in Fig. 3. Vardah was categorized as a very severe cyclonic storm
(VSCS—wind intensity exceeding 33 ms−1 ) and reported that it generated a storm
surge of 1 m height above the astronomical tide for Chennai, Kanchipuram, Thiru-
vallur districts along the Tamil Nadu coast and Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh.
The simulated results with the mentioned case scenarios were compared with the
reported values of IMD. Figures 4 and 5 represent the results of maximum water
levels and the corresponding residuals obtained during the cyclone’s progress at all
the six probe locations for different cut-off values of the drag coefficient.
According to the solutions obtained from the hydrodynamic coupled model, it
is noticeable that the cut-off value of 0.0035 shows the highest surge values which
are the closest to the observed value of 1 m on the Chennai and Ennore coasts. The
residuals that are shown in Fig. 6 explain the disturbances caused in the water levels by
the cyclone over and above the predicted astronomical tide (pure surge component).
These residuals are computed by removing the tide and considering only the pure
forcing of the surface winds that emerged during the cyclone to produce the surge.
Figure 6 illustrates the spatial variation of the maximum water levels obtained from
the model computations for a drag coefficient cut-off value of 0.0035. It also clearly
points out that the locations towards the right of the cyclone track experience higher
surge than that of the left side locations (as seen in the locations of Pondicherry and
Nagapattinam). This is because of the anticlockwise rotation of the wind field in a
moving cyclonic storm, which causes a higher surge elevation on the northern side.
To evaluate the performance of the wave model (SWAN), the computed significant
wave heights were compared with a deep water moored buoy (BD11) and shallow
water buoy (WRBP) observed data obtained from the Indian National Centre for
Ocean Information Services (INCOIS). The significant wave heights, both in the
deep water and shallow water locations, were overestimated (Fig. 7) by the model
for the no-cap condition as well as for the cut-off value of 0.0035 when the cyclone
passed these locations. However, for the cut-off values of 0.0025 and 0.0030, the
model wave heights are found to be in good agreement with the observed values.
Though there is a shift in the peak wave height’s phase in the deep water location,
it is understandable that SWAN is particularly built for nearshore regions, and it is
quite evident that its efficiency for deep water wave modelling is low unless it is
nested with global models like WW3 [19, 20]. It is also recognized that there is a
huge difference (underestimation of H s ) in the wave heights for the initial days of
simulation. This is because of not including the pre-existing wind conditions of the
region, rather, the forcing was made only with the cyclone wind intensities and also
non-inclusion of swell effects from the rest of the north Indian Ocean as well as the
Southern part of the Indian Ocean into the model domain. The Hs of both the probe
locations for the entire cyclone duration is shown in Fig. 7. The maximum significant
Sensitivity Study of Wind Drag Coefficient on Surge … 821

Fig. 4 Total water-level elevation at all the surge probe locations during Vardah’s landfall (in m)
822 C. Gowri Shankar et al.

Fig. 4 (continued)
Sensitivity Study of Wind Drag Coefficient on Surge … 823

Fig. 5 Residual at all the surge probe locations during Vardah’s landfall (in m)

wave heights exceeded 14 m (Fig. 8) along the cyclone track in the deep waters, and
when the waves started experiencing the drag from the sea bottom as they moved
towards the shore, the waves started breaking due to shoaling effect and wave heights
started reducing as they approached the coast.
824 C. Gowri Shankar et al.

Fig. 6 Spatial variation of maximum water level (in m) in the entire domain for C d  0.0035

5 Summary and Conclusions

A coupled (ADCIRC + SWAN) model was used to simulate the storm surges gen-
erated by the cyclone ‘Vardah’, and subsequently, significant wave heights, surge
heights and landfall time were computed. The simulated results from the coupled
model for the cut-off C d cases were compared with observed data, and it was found
that for a cut-off value of C d  0.0035, the model tends to produce much better
surge values, whereas, other simulations were greatly underestimated. The signifi-
cant wave heights computed from the wave model is also prone to water depth, as it
estimates better wave heights in the shallow water location than the deep water for a
cut-off value of 0.003. Therefore, it is obvious that SWAN model results based on the
default wind input settings for tropical cyclones are reliable for areas shallower than
the continental shelf (20–30 m) region regardless of the tendency to overestimate
the significant wave heights in deep waters [21]. Hence, these cut-off values can-
not be uniform for both the models in a coupled environment, rather they are model
dependent. Though the simulated wave heights match reasonably well in comparison
with the observed values for the case of 0.003 (cut-off of C d ), there can still be an
Sensitivity Study of Wind Drag Coefficient on Surge … 825

Fig. 7 Significant wave height at the two buoy probe locations (in m)

improvement in the representation of the drag coefficient formulation that is affected

by very high wind speeds during an extreme weather event. The results and analysis
interpreted from the present study will be extended further on a significant scale to
understand and determine the sensitive behaviour of C d in storm surge modelling,
as it can improve the accuracy of the latter to a great extent. Thus, the results could
be used for effective planning and design of mitigation and protection mechanisms
for better coastal resilience.
826 C. Gowri Shankar et al.

Fig. 8 Spatial variation of maximum significant wave height (in m) in the entire domain for Cd 
0.0035

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