ShoreShop3 First Data Released
Dylan McDougall
For those interested in shoreline change modeling:
We are happy to announce the availability of the first input data sets for the Shoreshop3 Model Intercomparison workshop to be held on Oct. 20-22, 2026 at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Shoreshop3 builds on the previous two workshops (Montaño et al., 2020; Mao
et al., 2025) by exploring which processes are most important at various time and space in the complex morphodynamic setting of the
North Carolina coastline.
Based on how each model represents physical processes, we will evaluate which processes/models most strongly influence shoreline change at each scale. This will include assessing how the modeling of morphodynamic behaviors depends on different ways of representing
processes, such as by comparing hydrodynamics-based models to those treating processes in a more synthesized way. We are hoping that participants will bring a wide variety of model types and approaches into this project, including machine learning models.
The scales of space and time under consideration include daily changes in shoreline positions for two transects at the Field Research Facility (FRF) in Duck, NC, all the way up to century hindcasts and forecasts along the entire NC coast (across hundreds of
kilometers) with CoastSat. We will evaluate how much of the variance in the shoreline-change signal can be explained by each model (i.e. set of processes), across a range of time scales as measured by wavelet power spectra. Models
should be calibrated to best match the distribution of variance. The repository for model results and comparisons with example Python notebooks that demonstrate using the input data can be found at
https://github.com/GeoOcean/shoreshop3.
The newly available data are short term hindcasts for use as input datasets in modeling and are free for anyone to download or browse in a
custom web map interface at
https://shoreshop3.netlify.app/data. For details on using the web map, see
this previous announcement. The data for Duck include biweekly to monthly shoreline positions from 1981-2019 for 10 FRF transects, averaged bathymetric profiles for those transects
(2 km long, about 18m water depth), irregularly gridded (0.5, 3, and 7 km spacing) hindcast wave bulk parameters for 1980-2023, and 3 m resolution gridded bathymetry. The data for all North Carolina include shoreline positions for CoastSat transects at 500
m spacing, irregularly gridded (0.5, 3, and 7 km spacing) wave bulk parameters and partitions with 3 swells, hourly WHACS winds for 1980-2023, beach nourishment volumes, dates, and locations from
PSDS, and NDBC wave buoys and
NCEI tide gauges for validation. Waves were downscaled from
WHACS using BinWaves. By around March 2026 we plan to release more datasets, including century-scale hindcasts, gridded bathymetry for all North Carolina, and daily shoreline positions for Duck.
We hope you will participate in the workshop. Please join our community effort, with whatever shoreline-change-relevant modeling approach you would like! Please see the
ShoreShop3 website for details. We will be able to support at least some travel expenses for the workshop (including for PhD students), with details depending on the level of interest. To stay in touch, please join
our updates-only email list by sending your name and email address to
shore...@duke.edu.
Thank you for your interest! Happy Modeling!
Dylan McDougall, Brad Murray, Fernando Mendez, Mark Piper, Jennifer Montano, Aidan Dealy, and the Advisory council of Giovanni Coco, Dano Roelvink, and Kristen Splinter