Measured and modeled wave overtopping on a natural beach

The rate of wave overtopping of a barrier beach is measured and modeled. Unique rate of wave overtopping field data are obtained from the measure of the Carmel River, California, lagoon filling during a time when the lagoon is closed-off with no river inflow. Volume changes are based on measured lagoon height changes applied to a measured hypsometric curve. Wave heights and periods are obtained from directional wave spectra data in 15 m fronting the beach. Beach morphology was measured by GPS walking surveys. Three empirical overtopping models by Van der Meer and Janssen (1995), Hedges and Reis (1998) and Pullen et al. (2007) with differing parameterizations on wave height, period and beach slope and calibrated using extensive laboratory data obtained over plane, impermeable beaches are applied in a quasi-2D manner and compared with the field observations. Three overtopping events are considered when morphology data were available less than 2 weeks prior to the event. The models are tuned to fit the data using a reduction factor to account for beach permeability, berm characteristics, non-normal wave incidence and surface roughness influence. In addition, the run-up model by Stockdon et al. (2006) based on field data is examined and found to underestimate run-up as the calculated values were too small to predict any of the observed overtopping. The three overtopping models performed similarly well with values of 0.72–0.87 for the two narrow-banded wave cases, with an average reduction factor of 0.78. The European model (Pullen et. al., 2007) performed best overall and in particular for the case of the broad-banded, double peaked wave spectrum.