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Andrea O'Neill

Oceanographer with the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

I'm an oceanographer and meteorologist with Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center in Santa Cruz, CA. I have expertise in coastal and marine hazards projections, hydrodynamic simulations, coastal impacts with climate change, and team building. Following 11 years of meteorological and oceanographic forecasting in the Western Pacific, I began my career at USGS doing future coastal flooding hazards projections using the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS).  I have a B.S. in oceanography from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, and an M.S. in physical oceanography and meteorology from Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.

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Aerial view of coastal bluffs, marine terrace with farmland, beach in distance with lagoon, highway runs along coast.

Dynamic coastlines along the western U.S.

The west coast of the United States is extremely complex and changeable because of tectonic activity, mountain building, and land subsidence. These active environments pose a major challenge for accurately assessing climate change impacts, since models were historically developed for more passive sandy coasts.
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center
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Dynamic coastlines along the western U.S.

The west coast of the United States is extremely complex and changeable because of tectonic activity, mountain building, and land subsidence. These active environments pose a major challenge for accurately assessing climate change impacts, since models were historically developed for more passive sandy coasts.
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An interactive mapping application in which the user can choose parameters from the menus to create a computer model of flooding

Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS)

The Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) makes detailed predictions of storm-induced coastal flooding, erosion, and cliff failures over large geographic scales. CoSMoS was developed for hindcast studies, operational applications and future climate scenarios to provide emergency responders and coastal planners with critical storm-hazards information that can be used to increase public safety...
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center
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Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS)

The Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) makes detailed predictions of storm-induced coastal flooding, erosion, and cliff failures over large geographic scales. CoSMoS was developed for hindcast studies, operational applications and future climate scenarios to provide emergency responders and coastal planners with critical storm-hazards information that can be used to increase public safety...
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Future coastal hazards along the U.S. Atlantic coast

This product consists of several datasets that map future coastal flooding and erosion hazards due to sea level rise (SLR) and storms for three States (Florida, Georgia, and Virginia) along the Atlantic coast of the United States. The SLR scenarios encompass a plausible range of projections by 2100 based on the best available science and with enough resolution to support a suite of different plann
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Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Future coastal hazards along the U.S. North and South Carolina coasts

This product consists of several datasets that map future coastal flooding and erosion hazards due to sea level rise (SLR) and storms along the North and South Carolina coast. The SLR scenarios encompass a plausible range of projections by 2100 based on the best available, science and with enough resolution to support a suite of different planning horizons. The storm scenarios are derived with the
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Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) for Northern California 3.2

The Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) makes detailed predictions (meter-scale) over large geographic scales (100s of kilometers) of storm-induced coastal flooding and erosion for both current and future sea-level rise (SLR) scenarios. CoSMoS 3.2 for Northern California shows projections for future climate scenarios (sea-level rise and storms) to provide emergency responders and coastal planne
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Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) for Central California, v3.1

The Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) makes detailed predictions (meter-scale) over large geographic scales (100s of kilometers) of storm-induced coastal flooding and erosion for both current and future sea-level rise (SLR) scenarios. CoSMoS v3.1 for Central California shows projections for future climate scenarios (sea-level rise and storms) to provide emergency responders and coastal planne
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) for Southern California, v3.0, Phase 2

The Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) makes detailed predictions (meter-scale) over large geographic scales (100s of kilometers) of storm-induced coastal flooding and erosion for both current and future sea-level-rise scenarios, as well as long-term shoreline change and cliff retreat. Resulting projections for future climate scenarios (sea-level rise and storms) provide emergency responders a
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Hydrodynamic and sediment transport data from San Pablo Bay and China Camp marsh (northern San Francisco Bay), 2013-2016

The U.S. Geological Survey Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center collected data to investigate sediment dynamics in the shallows of San Pablo Bay and sediment exchange between bay shallows and the tidal salt marsh in China Camp State Park in a series of deployments between December 2013 and June 2016. This data release includes two related groups of data sets. The first group, denoted by names
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Near-surface wind fields for San Francisco Bay--historical and 21st-century projected time series

To support Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) in the San Francisco Bay (v2.1), time series of historical and 21st-century near-surface wind fields (eastward and northward wind arrays) were simulated throughout the Bay. While global climate models (GCMs) provide useful projections of near-surface wind vectors into the 21st century, resolution is not sufficient enough for use in regional wave m
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center
Photograph of Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and Main Beach in winter of 2016 when big storms hit the California coast.
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Projecting climate dependent coastal flood risk with a hybrid statistical dynamical model

Numerical models for tides, storm surge, and wave runup have demonstrated ability to accurately define spatially varying flood surfaces. However these models are typically too computationally expensive to dynamically simulate the full parameter space of future oceanographic, atmospheric, and hydrologic conditions that will constructively compound in the nearshore to cause both extreme event and nu
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Impacts of sea-level rise on the tidal reach of California coastal rivers using the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS)

In coastal rivers, the interactions between tides and fluvial discharge affect local ecology, sedimentation, river dynamics, river mouth configuration, and the flooding potential in adjacent wetlands and low-lying areas. With sea-level rise, the tidal reach within coastal rivers can expand upstream, impacting river dynamics and increasing flood risk across a much greater area. Rivers along the Pac
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Dynamic flood modeling essential to assess the coastal impacts of climate change

Coastal inundation due to sea level rise (SLR) is projected to displace hundreds of millions of people worldwide over the next century, creating significant economic, humanitarian, and national-security challenges. However, the majority of previous efforts to characterize potential coastal impacts of climate change have focused primarily on long-term SLR with a static tide level, and have not comp
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Identification of storm events and contiguous coastal sections for deterministic modeling of extreme coastal flood events in response to climate change

Deterministic dynamical modeling of future climate conditions and associated hazards, such as flooding, can be computationally-expensive if century-long time-series of waves, sea level variations, and overland flow patterns are simulated. To alleviate some of the computational costs, local impacts of individual coastal storms can be explored by first identifying particular events or scenarios of i
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Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Assessing and communicating the impacts of climate change on the Southern California coast

Over the course of this and the next century, the combination of rising sea levels, severe storms, and coastal erosion will threaten the sustainability of coastal communities, development, and ecosystems as we currently know them. To clearly identify coastal vulnerabilities and develop appropriate adaptation strategies for projected increased levels of coastal flooding and erosion, coastal manager
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Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Projected 21st century coastal flooding in the Southern California Bight. Part 2: Tools for assessing climate change-driven coastal hazards and socio-economic impacts

This paper is the second of two that describes the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) approach for quantifying physical hazards and socio-economic hazard exposure in coastal zones affected by sea-level rise and changing coastal storms. The modelling approach, presented in Part 1, downscales atmospheric global-scale projections to local scale coastal flood impacts by deterministically computing
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Projected 21st century coastal flooding in the Southern California Bight. Part 1: Development of the third generation CoSMoS model

Due to the effects of climate change over the course of the next century, the combination of rising sea levels, severe storms, and coastal change will threaten the sustainability of coastal communities, development, and ecosystems as we know them today. To clearly identify coastal vulnerabilities and develop appropriate adaptation strategies due to projected increased levels of coastal flooding an
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Estimating fluvial discharges coincident with 21st century coastal storms modeled with CoSMoS

On the open coast, flooding is largely driven by tides, storm surge, waves, and in areas near coastal inlets, the magnitude and co-occurrence of high fluvial discharges. Statistical methods are typically used to estimate the individual probability of coastal storm and fluvial discharge occurrences for use in sophisticated flood hazard models. A challenge arises when considering possible future cli
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Climate change-driven cliff and beach evolution at decadal to centennial time scales

Here we develop a computationally efficient method that evolves cross-shore profiles of sand beaches with or without cliffs along natural and urban coastal environments and across expansive geographic areas at decadal to centennial time-scales driven by 21st century climate change projections. The model requires projected sea level rise rates, extrema of nearshore wave conditions, bluff recession
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Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

Downscaling wind and wavefields for 21st century coastal flood hazard projections in a region of complex terrain

While global climate models (GCMs) provide useful projections of near-surface wind vectors into the 21st century, resolution is not sufficient enough for use in regional wave modeling. Statistically downscaled GCM projections from Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogues provide daily averaged near-surface winds at an appropriate spatial resolution for wave modeling within the orographically co
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Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center
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USGS and NASA researchers meet to discuss Synthetic Aperture Radar for assessing USGS coastal-flooding projections

USGS and NASA researchers met July 16 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to discuss Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery of the Southern...

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