Project Title: Investigating causes of changing tidal range and timing in U.S. harbors
NOAA Mission Goal: Resilient Coastal Communities and Economies
Hypothesis/Objectives: The Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS) collects and disseminates water level, current, and meteorological data from over 200 real-time stations along the US coastline. The Applications and Analysis Team (AAT) is charged with carrying out scientific and statistical analyses to develop new products based on CO-OPS’ historical data. Once the analysis results are complete they are documented in a technical report to make the results available to the public.
The CO-OPS database contains over 50 years of hourly water level records for from many stations and over 100 years of data at ten stations. A year of hourly data can be analyzed to obtain the tidal component as a set of standard frequencies known as the tidal constituents, which have a unique amplitude and phase at each station’s location. It is known that at some stations the overall range and timing of the tide has been slowly changing over the decades; the goal of this project is to analyze each year of hourly data for a number of long-term stations to find how much each of the five largest tidal constituents are contributing the changing tide. These changes may be caused by factors such as morphological change, harbor deepening through dredging, shoreline hardening and long-term sea level rise. Any significant long-term increase in a harbor’s tidal amplitude will likely increase its flooding potential from future sea level rise. Thus, understanding these potential changes in the tide will be critical for accurately assessing future flooding risk from sea level rise.
Academic Status: Undergraduate
Areas of Discipline: Climate Change, Computer and Information Sciences, Information Systems, Meteorology, Oceanography
Intern Duties/Responsibilities: The applicant will work with scientists and IT personnel to select and organize hourly data from a number of long-term stations and then apply the harmonic analysis program for each year of data. The applicant will work both independently and as a member of a team responsible for the scientific analysis of oceanographic data. Applicant develops and implements a plan to reach the project goals and then documents and evaluates the results.
Special Skills or Training Required: Applicant will analyze the data, organize the results in tables and plots, and document the project in a preliminary report. Some experience with statistics and data analysis is required. The applicant is expected to be comfortable utilizing the MATLAB computer software, along with at least minimal experience running and writing simple code or scripts in the MATLAB environment. Some physics based environmental science background is helpful (e.g. physical oceanography, fluid dynamics, etc.), but not required.
Expected Outcomes: At the end of the internship, the intern will have completed a research and analysis project and have created a preliminary draft for a NOAA Technical Report. If desired, the intern will have the opportunity to be co-author on a future conference proceedings or journal article. The intern will have the opportunity to gain insight into the working environment of an operational NOAA office which distributes vital coastal oceanographic information to the public.
Guidance/Supervision: Intern will work under the supervision of the CO-OPS Chief Scientist and a Senior Oceanographer and collaborate with employees of the CO-OPS Oceanographic Division.