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Infragravity (hereafter IG) waves are surface ocean waves with frequencies below those of wind-generated “short waves” (typically below 0.04 Hz). Here we focus on the most common type of IG waves, those induced by the presence of groups in incident short waves. Three related mechanisms explain their generation: (1) the development, shoaling and release of waves bound to the short-wave group envelopes (2) the modulation by these envelopes of the location where short waves break, and (3) the merging of bores (breaking wave front, resembling to a hydraulic jump) inside the surfzone. When reaching shallow water (O(1–10 m)), IG waves can transfer part of their energy back to higher frequencies, a process which is highly dependent on beach slope. On gently sloping beaches, IG waves can dissipate a substantial amount of energy through depth-limited breaking. When the bottom is very rough, such as in coral reef environments, a substantial amount of energy can be dissipated through bottom friction. IG wave energy that is not dissipated is reflected seaward, predominantly for the lowest IG frequencies and on steep bottom slopes. This reflection of the lowest IG frequencies can result in the development of standing (also known as stationary) waves. Reflected IG waves can be refractively trapped so that quasi-periodic along-shore patterns, also referred to as edge waves, can develop. IG waves have a large range of implications in the hydro-sedimentary dynamics of coastal zones. For example, they can modulate current velocities in rip channels and strongly influence cross-shore and longshore mixing. On sandy beaches, IG waves can strongly impact the water table and associated groundwater flows. On gently sloping beaches and especially under storm conditions, IG waves can dominate cross-shore sediment transport, generally promoting offshore transport inside the surfzone. Under storm conditions, IG waves can also induce overwash and eventually promote dune erosion and barrier breaching. In tidal inlets, IG waves can propagate into the back-barrier lagoon during the flood phase and induce large modulations of currents and sediment transport. Their effect appears to be smaller during the ebb phase, due to blocking by countercurrents, particularly in shallow systems. On coral and rocky reefs, IG waves can dominate over short-waves and control the hydro-sedimentary dynamics over the reef flat and in the lagoon. In harbors and semi-enclosed basins, free IG waves can be amplified by resonance and induce large seiches (resonant oscillations). Lastly, free IG waves that are generated in the nearshore can cross oceans and they can also explain the development of the Earth's “hum” (background free oscillations of the solid earth). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing interest for marine flooding related to recent catastrophic events and their unintended consequences in terms of casualties and damages, and to the increasing population and issues along the coasts in a context of changing climate. Consequently, the knowledge on marine flooding has progressed significantly for the last years and this review, focused on storm-induced marine submersions, responds to the need for a synthesis. Three main components are presented in the review: (1) a state-of-the-art on marine submersions from the viewpoint of several scientific disciplines; (2) a selection of examples demonstrating the added value of interdisciplinary approaches to improve our knowledge of marine submersions; (3) a selection of examples showing how the management of future crises or the planning efforts to adapt to marine submersions can be supported by new results or techniques from the research community. From a disciplinary perspective, recent progress was achieved with respect to physical processes, numerical modeling, the knowledge of past marine floods and vulnerability assessment. At a global scale, the most vulnerable coastal areas to marine flooding with high population density are deltas and estuaries. Recent and well-documented floods allow analyzing the vulnerability parameters of different coastal zones. While storm surges can nowadays be reproduced accurately, the modeling of coastal flooding is more challenging, particularly when barrier breaches and wave overtopping have to be accounted for. The chronology of past marine floods can be reconstructed combining historical archives and sediment records. Sediment records of past marine floods localized in back barrier depressions are more adequate to reconstruct past flooding chronology. For the two last centuries, quantitative and descriptive historical data can be used to characterize past marine floods. Beyond providing a chronology of events, sediment records combined with geochronology, statistical analysis and climatology, can be used to reconstruct millennial-scale climate variability and enable a better understanding of the possible regional and local long-term trends in storm activity. Sediment records can also reveal forgotten flooding of exceptional intensity, much more intense than those of the last few decades. Sedimentological and historical archives, combined with high-resolution topographic data or numerical hindcast of storms can provide quantitative information and explanations for marine flooding processes. From these approaches, extreme past sea levels height can be determined and are very useful to complete time series provided by the instrumental measurements on shorter time scales. In particular, historical data can improve the determination of the return periods associated with extreme water levels, which are often inaccurate when computed based on instrumental data, due to the presence of gaps and too short time-series. Long-term numerical hindcast of tides and surges can also be used to provide the required time series for statistical analysis. Worst-case scenarios, used to define coastal management plans and strategies, can be obtained from realistic atmospheric settings with different tidal ranges and by shifting the trajectory of storms. Management of future crises and planning efforts to adapt to marine submersions are optimized by predictions of water levels from hydrodynamic models. Such predictions combined with in situ measurements and analysis of human stakes can be used to define a vulnerability index. Then, the efficiency of adaptation measures can be evaluated with respect to the number of lives that could be potentially saved. Numerical experiments also showed that the realignment of coastal defenses could result in water level reduction up to 1 m in the case where large marshes are flooded. Such managed realignment of coastal defenses may constitute a promising adaptation to storm-induced flooding and future sea level rise. From a legal perspective, only a few texts pay specific attention to the risk of marine flooding whether nationally or globally. Recent catastrophic events and their unintended consequences in terms of death and damages have triggered political decisions, like in USA after hurricane Katrina, and in France after catastrophic floods that occurred in 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breaching of coastal barriers is a three-dimensional process induced by complex interactions between hydrodynamics, sediment transport and soil avalanching processes. Although numerous coastal barriers are breached every year in many coastal countries, causing dramatic inundations of the nearshore areas, the understanding of the processes and interactions associated with both breaching and subsequent flood propagation is still poor. This might explain why their combined modelling and prediction has not yet been sufficiently addressed. Consequently, barrier breaching and subsequent inundation are still often modelled separately, thus ignoring the strong interaction between breaching and flooding. However, the combined modelling of such strongly coupled processes is crucial. Since the open-source model system “XBeach” consists, among others, of a nonlinear shallow water solver coupled with a morphodynamic model, also including a soil avalanching module, it has the potential to simulate both breaching and subsequent flood propagation together. Indeed, the mutual interactions between hydrodynamics and morphodynamics (including soil avalanching) are properly accounted for. This paper, therefore, aims to examine the applicability of XBeach for modelling coastal barrier breaching and inundation modelling in combination, instead of the current approaches, which address the modelling of each of these two processes separately. The performance of XBeach, in terms of inundation modelling, is assessed through comparisons of the results from this model system (i) with the results from common 1D and 2D flood propagation models and (ii) with observations for barrier breaching and subsequent inundation from a real case study. Besides providing an improved understanding of the breaching process, the results of this study demonstrate a new promising application of XBeach and its potential for calculating time-varying inland discharges, as well as for combined modelling of both dune breaching and subsequent flood propagation in coastal zones.

Vidal-Juárez, T.; Ruiz de Alegría-Arzaburu, A.; Mejía-Trejo, A.; García-Nava, H., and Enriquez, C., 2014. Predicting barrier beach breaching due to extreme water levels at San Quintín, Baja California, México. This study comprises a first approach to numerically determine the hydrodynamic conditions leading to barrier breaching at San Quintín, located in the northwestern coast of the Baja California peninsula in Mexico. The barrier is backed by a large coastal lagoon, fronted by a field of submerged volcanoes located several kilometers off the coast and is exposed to large incoming wave energy dominated by the Pacific swell. The narrowest barrier beach sections are vulnerable to flooding due to overwash events that take place during concurrent high spring tides, energetic storm waves and a range of storm surge levels. Here, the conditions to barrier overwash and breaching occurrence are identified, and the extent of the floods is numerically quantified. For that purpose, the Delft3D hydrodynamic model is applied coupling waves and flows to simulate a series of scenarios, which comprise storm waves of different magnitudes and periods approaching from typical directions, and coupled to spring tides and several storm surge levels. As a consequence of the presence of submerged volcanoes off the coast, the incoming wave energy is mostly concentrated at two specific locations along the barrier beach, which correspond to the lowest and narrowest barrier locations. Due the large distance between both sites, longshore variations are not expected to be as strong as the cross-shore. Numerical results suggest that the barrier is susceptible to flooding during spring tides combined with extreme waves of significant wave heights larger than 3.5 m and a peak period of 7.5 s, and storm surge levels exceeding 0.9 m, which may lead to breaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]