The Huelva (Spain) tsunami-ready station and its interaction with storm Emma (March 2018)

Abstract

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Marine Geodesy on 2020, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01490419.2020.1758856.

The sea level station operating since 1996 at Mazagón (Huelva, Spain) has been progressively upgraded to fit tsunami warning requirements, due to its location in one of the main regions at risk. Its radar water level sensor was complemented in 2017, with the addition of a pressure sensor. The performance of both sea level sensors and their response to sea level oscillations, at different frequencies, is assessed. Particular emphasis is put on the effect of extreme events, such as Storm Emma, when alternative methods to obtain 1-min data are tested, in contrast to the one based on arithmetic means. The overall differences are small, for the whole period of study (centered-root-mean-square-error below 1 cm, for 5-min, and hourly data; similar tidal parameters and sea level oscillations with periods between 30 s and 5 min). However, during Storm Emma, the pressure sensor presents sensibly lower readings than the radar, with the centered-root-mean-square-error rising to 80 mm on the March 2nd 2018. A new method to compute 1-min data, based on medians, reduced this value to 10 mm for the same day.

Peer Reviewed

Postprint (author's final draft)