Julia W. Fiedler

Scanning terrestrial lidars can simultaneously measure beach topography and sea-surface elevations across the surf-zone at high resolution. These maps of sea-surface elevations can be used to extract wave properties, which can then be inverted for depth and combined with beach topography observations, offering an exciting avenue for quantifying the morphological changes of sandy beaches at various temporal scales. As water depth decreases in this nearshore region, non-linear amplitude dispersion effects become increasingly relevant to wave shape and propagation and such effects need to be accounted for when estimating depth from remotely-sensed wave dispersive properties. Martins et al. (2023) recently proposed a new non-linear (Boussinesq) depth-inversion method to estimate nearshore depths from dense maps of sea surface elevation measurements. Here, we present our preliminary efforts aimed at implementing this Boussinesq approach to multiple lidar datasets collected recently in the field at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Field Research Facility (FRF) in Duck NC.

Numerical predictions of nearshore waves and shoreline runup are usually initialized on the inner shelf, seaward of the surfzone, with sea‐swell (SS) waves from local wave buoys or regional wave models. Lower frequency infragravity (IG) waves are not reliably measured by buoys or included in regional models. Here, co‐located pressure and velocity observations are used to characterize IG waves in 10–15 m depth in southern California. Shoreward propagating IG waves are often dominated by free waves, with the boundwave energy fraction R² = 0.71). Including the tide level as a proxy for beach slope and modifying the SS frequency dependency increases R² to 0.91. The ratio of free seaward to shoreward propagating IG energy suggests between 50 and 100% of the energy radiated seaward in depths of 10–15 m is trapped offshore and redirected shoreward. Free (random phase) and bound (phase‐coupled) IG waves are combined to initialize the SWASH numerical model. SWASH predicted runup is only weakly influenced by waves at the offshore boundary. Nonlinear IG generation and dissipation in the shoaling and surfzone overwhelm the effects of shoreward propagating waves observed at the offshore boundary.

Understanding and predicting changes in shoreline location are critical for coastal planners. In situ monitoring is accurate but not widely available. Satellite observations of shorelines have global coverage, but their accuracy and predictive capacity have not been fully explored. Abundant beach surveys and extensive wave observations in Southern California provide a unique ground truth for the interpretation of satellite‐derived recently wetted waterlines. We combine 23 years of waterline position estimates from satellite imagery with nearshore wave hindcasts and tides to train and test a deep neural network (DNN). The trained DNN uses only tides and waves as predictors at transects with satellite coverage and wave estimates to predict beach width and, for the first time, seasonal average beach slopes. Beach width changes hindcast using DNN have at least fair skill (>0.3) for 50% of transects, where the skill was calculated relative to the mean of extensive new in situ survey data from in San Diego County. The DNN also predicted shoreline changes to within 10 m (the nominal uncertainty in satellite‐derived shorelines) for 64% of transects lacking ground truth. DNN and survey estimates of seasonal beach slope changes also agree qualitatively.

Co-located pressure and velocity observations in 10-15m depth are used to estimate the relative contribution of bound and free infragravity (IG) wave energy to the IG wave field. Shoreward and seaward going IG waves are analyzed separately. At the Southern California sites, shoreward propagating IG waves are dominated by free waves, with the bound wave energy fraction <30% for moderate energy incident sea-swell and <10% for low energy incident sea-swell. Only the 5% of records with energetic long swell show primarily bound waves. Consistent with bound IG wave theory, the energy scales as the square (frequency integrated) sea-swell energy, with a higher correlation with swell than sea energy. Seaward and shoreward free IG energy is strongly tidally modulated. The ratio of free seaward to shoreward propagating IG energy suggests between 50-100% of the energy radiated offshore is trapped on the shelf seaward of 10-15m and redirected shoreward. Remote sources of IG energy are small. The observed linear dependency of free seaward and shoreward IG energy on local sea-swell wave energy and tide are parameterized with good skill (R2 ~ 0.90). Free (random phase) and bound (phase-coupled) IG waves are included in numerically simulated timeseries for shoreward IG waves that are used to initialize (~ 10m depth) the numerical nonlinear wave transformation SWASH. On the low slope study beach, wave runup is only weakly influenced by free shoreward propagating waves observed at the offshore boundary (foreshore slope = 0.02).

Seismic signals from ocean‐solid Earth interactions are ubiquitously recorded on our planet. However, these wavefields are typically incoherent in the time domain limiting their utilization for understanding ocean dynamics or solid Earth properties. In contrast, we find that during large storms such as hurricanes and Nor'easters the interaction of long‐period ocean waves with shallow seafloor features located near the edge of continental shelves, known as ocean banks, excites coherent transcontinental Rayleigh wave packets in the 20‐ to 50‐s period band. These “stormquakes” migrate coincident with the storms but are effectively spatiotemporally focused seismic point sources with equivalent earthquake magnitudes that can be greater than 3.5. Stormquakes thus provide new coherent sources to investigate Earth structure in locations that typically lack both seismic instrumentation and earthquakes. Moreover, they provide a new geophysical observable with high spatial and temporal resolution with which to investigate ocean wave dynamics during large storms.