Meteorologically Induced Strong Seiches Observed at Arraial Do Cabo, RJ, Brazil
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Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 34 (2009) 989–997 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Physics and Chemistry of the Earth journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pce Meteorologically induced strong seiches observed at Arraial do Cabo, RJ, Brazil Rogério Neder Candella Instituto de Estudos do Mar Almirante Paulo Moreira, Rua Kioto 253, 28930-000 Arraial do Cabo, RJ, Brazil article info abstract Article history: Meteorologically seiche oscillations can sometimes reach significant heights, causing severe damage. Received 28 January 2009 There is only one reference to an extreme event of this type in Brazil, but it is based on only eyewitness Received in revised form 25 June 2009 reports, without data confirmation. However, this lack of observed events is due to the very small number Accepted 29 June 2009 of high-resolution sea level measurements along the coast. The main purposes of the present study were Available online 1 July 2009 to analyze a 4-year high-resolution series, collected at Arraial do Cabo, RJ, Brazil, to identify the main high-frequency sea level events and to relate them to possible forcing. In the series examined, high-fre- Keywords: quency oscillations (T < 1 h) were almost always present, with a dominant period close to the fundamen- Longwaves tal mode of the bay (Helmholtz mode, n = 0), about 20 min. Although their average height was 20 cm, in Seiches Harbor resonance some situations, these waves exceeded 30 cm, and in an extreme event, associated with an atmospheric Atmospheric pressure jumps pressure jump of 10 hPa/2 h, the oscillations reached 60 cm. That is comparable to the largest amplitude Brazilian coast low-frequency variation (T > 36 h) measured in the region between 1999 and 2008. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Arraial do Cabo, a city located on the east coast of the Rio de Ja- neiro (RJ) State, is the main point of manifestation of coastal Large-amplitude sea level oscillations with periods between 2 h upwelling phenomenon on the Brazilian coast, generally referred and a few minutes can be induced by atmospheric disturbances. to as the ‘‘Cabo Frio upwelling”. Because of this, the Instituto de These waves have been referred to as meteorological tsunamis or Estudos do Mar Almirante Paulo Moreira, a Brazilian Navy oceano- meteotsunamis and, under appropriate conditions, are able to graphic research institution, was established there in the 1970’s, cause destruction in coastal areas (Monserrat et al., 2006). Ciutad- which maintains a tidal station in the city port. Between the end ella Inlet (Menorca Island, Western Mediterranean), where the of 2001 and the beginning of 2005, a digital tide gauge was oper- phenomenon is called rissaga (Rabinovich and Monserrat, 1996), ated at this station, which allowed obtaining a time series with and Široka Bay, on the Island of First in the northern Adriatic (Šepic´ sampling intervals between 1 and 3 min and subsequently the et al., 2009), are examples of how destructive these waves can be. identification of several events in subtidal scale. There are only a few studies related to examination of high-res- The Bay of Arraial do Cabo, called Enseada dos Anjos (Fig. 1), has olution sea level oscillations along the Brazilian coast, mainly due basically a bottle shape, and is formed in an indentation in the con- to the lack of adequate measurements. Although the tide gauge tinent, limited by the islands of Cabo Frio on the east and Porcos on network is being improved with the installation of digital equip- the north. The bay’s main opening of about 1.4 km, faces northeast, ment at several sites along the coast, the main purpose of these but there are two other narrow passages, the first, 240 m wide, fac- gauges remains the low-frequency events, such as storm surges, ing north, and the second, 130 m wide, facing southwest. The length tides and low-frequency sea level variations. Rosauro (1986) stud- of the bay is approximately 3.5 km, but much of the southern por- ied the presence of seiches in the Lagoa dos Patos, Rio Grande do tion of the bay is shallow with depths less than 5 m, evidenced by Sul (RS). Melo Filho et al. (2005) described a possible meteotsun- the isobathymetric lines in Fig. 1. The intensive energy dissipation ami event at Cassino Beach, RS, which even caused loss of proper- in this region significantly influences longwave oscillations within ties and lives. However, this study was based only on reports, the bay. Moreover, the port where the tide gauge was installed is without measurements. Dragani et al. (2002) used data from 3 sta- protected by a breakwater, forming a sub-bay and making the cal- tions to study the occurrence of waves with periods less than 2 h in culation of its characteristic parameters very complex. Future the Argentinean coast, and Dragani (2007) conducted numerical numerical experiments should clarify the effects of bathymetry experiments to investigate their possible forcing mechanism. and configuration of the coast on the behavior of seiches in the bay. The continental shelf south of the bay is quite short, with 50-m depths along the coast of Cabo Frio Island. Along the 23°S parallel, E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] there is a step in the bathymetry, best seen in 100 m isobath line, 1474-7065/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pce.2009.06.007 990 R.N. Candella / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 34 (2009) 989–997 Fig. 1. Location and bathymetry of the Bay of Arraial do Cabo. The TG mark indicates the position of the tide gauge. and from that point, the platform tends to extend more to the 4L 4 Ã 3500 Tn ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffi ) T0 ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ¼ 19:2 min; ð1Þ broad, resulting in smoother depth gradients. The astronomical lo- ð2n þ 1Þ gh 9:8 Ã 15 cal tide is semidiurnal with typical spring-neap ranges from 1.0 m to 0.4 m. where L = 3500 m is the length of the bay and g is the gravitational The 2001 sea level data were selected to examine the spectral acceleration. For n = 1, 2, the corresponding periods are 6.4 and characteristics of the bay, because of the higher quality of the cor- 3.8 min. In the same figure, three other high-frequency peaks can responding record and lack of significant gaps. The spectrum was be noted: 12.4, 8.9 and 7.0 s. The first one is close to the first mode calculated with Fast Fourier Transform and using frequency harmonic (n = 1) of the bay. The two last are, probably, related to dependent degrees of freedom (df = 254 for periods (T) greater than the sub-bay dimensions (width = 870 m, length = 780 m), but the 66.3 min and df = 2046 for T < 66.3 min), to avoid noise in the high complexity of the bathymetry and of the coastal line of the bay À2 frequency domain. It follows an x energy distribution, typical for and sub-bay does not allow accurate estimations. longwave spectra (cf. Aida et al., 1972; Kulikov et al., 1983; For the same reason, the Q-factor, which measures the energy Rabinovich and Stephenson, 2004) and indicates the presence of decay of the system, had to be estimated from the observational several peaks with frequencies higher than 1 cph, highlighting the data (cf. Miles and Munk, 1961; Rabinovich, 2009) period of approximately 19.6 min as the most prominent (Fig. 2). Taking the mean depth h = 15 m, reasonable for the region, the fun- f0 0:0506 damental mode of the bay (Helmholtz mode, n = 0) can be calcu- Q ¼ ¼ 12; ð2Þ Df 0:0042 lated as R.N. Candella / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 34 (2009) 989–997 991 Fig. 2. Sea level spectral analysis (with frequency dependent degrees of freedom) for 2001. The energy peaks related to main components of tides, the fundamental mode period (Helmholtz mode, n =0,T ffi 20 min) and other significant periods are indicated. Fig. 3. Location of meteorological stations used. Cananéia and Ubatuba are in the São Paulo State, while Arraial do Cabo and Galeão are in the Rio de Janeiro State. Linear distance between Cananéia and Ubatuba is 340 km. Ubatuba and Arraial do Cabo are 320 km apart. where f0 is the peak frequency and Df is the width at its half 2. Data description and treatment maximum height. This factor is comparable to that determined by Rabinovich (2009) for Malokurilsk Bay, a bottle-like bay in one of The sea level records were obtained by an inductive type digital the Kuril Islands (NW Pacific), where seiches with periods of tide gauge, with the sampling interval ranging from 1 to 3 min dur- 18.6 min and significant heights are frequently recorded. ing the measurement period and with 1-cm vertical resolution. 992 R.N. Candella / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 34 (2009) 989–997 Fig. 4. Maximum height for seiches (T < 180 min) over the period analyzed. Notable are the heights for the months of December 2004 (tsunami in Sumatra) and September 2002 (meteotsunami). The original series was divided into two sub-sets, the first from and to identify the major events, the variance was calculated from November 20, 2000, to October 10, 2003, 08:50 UTC, and the sec- segments of 90 min with overlap of 45 min. ond from November 10, 2003, 13:42 UTC, to February 15, 2005, A toolbox developed by Torrence (1998) was employed to the due to a malfunction of the equipment.