Super typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines on 8 November 2013, marking one of the strongest typhoons at landfall in recorded history. Extreme storm waves attacked the Pacific coast of Eastern Samar where the violent typhoon first made landfall. Our field survey confirmed that storm overwash heights of 6–14 m above mean sea level were distributed along the southeastern coast and extensive inundation occurred in some coastal villages in spite of natural protection by wide fringing reefs. A wave model based on Boussinesq‐type equations is constructed to simulate wave transformation over shallow fringing reefs and validated against existing laboratory data. Wave propagation and runup on the Eastern Samar coast are then reproduced using offshore boundary conditions based on a wave hindcast. The model results suggest that extreme waves on the shore are characterized as a superposition of the infragravity wave and sea‐swell components. The balance of the two components is strongly affected by the reef width and beach slope through wave breaking, frictional dissipation, reef‐flat resonances, and resonant runup amplification. Therefore, flood characteristics significantly differ from site to site due to a large variation of the two topographic parameters on the hilly coast. Strong coupling of infragravity waves and sea swells produces extreme runup on steep beaches fronted by narrow reefs, whereas the infragravity waves become dominant over wide reefs and they evolve into bores on steep beaches.

A post-event survey of the coastal impacts of Typhoon Hagibis was conducted in the Greater Tokyo and Shizuoka areas. The typhoon’s intensive landfall generated the highest-level storm surges recorded in the study area with a maximum sea-level anomaly of nearly 2 m at the head of Tokyo Bay. Highly populated coastal areas in the inner sheltered part of Tokyo Bay were subject to only minor damage partially because the peak storm surge occurred during a low spring tide. High water levels along the coastline facing the Pacific Ocean mostly measured 4–8 m above the mean sea level, the exception being the Seisho coast, where extreme wave runup reached over 10 m above the mean sea level. The high water levels predominantly caused by energetic swells were comparable with the crest heights of defense structures in a broad range of the study area. The intensive typhoon did not trigger catastrophic flood damage, but caused minor flooding due to wave overtopping, and there was substantial damage to coastal infrastructures along the coast. This paper presents both an overview of and detailed information regarding the coastal impacts of the intensive typhoon along the highly altered coastline with complex geometry.

Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused catastrophic damages across the Caribbean Islands during the 2017 hurricane season. After the storms, a joint United States–Japanese team investigated coastal impacts in the US Virgin Islands, which are composed of the islands of St. Thomas, St. John, Water Island, and St. Croix. Coastal inundation was dominated by wave run-up in almost all locations, with many locations showing inundation exceeding 4-m elevation from mean sea level. In contrast, maximum elevations recorded at tide gauges did not exceed 1 m at any location. Coastal damage was relatively minor for such strong hurricanes because of the lack of heavy development at low elevations on the most exposed coastlines. Many moored vessels were destroyed, and coastal structures and infrastructure within the inundation region suffered significant damage. However, few large structures experienced catastrophic losses from coastal inundation. In contrast, strong winds caused extensive structural damage throughout the US Territory. Evidence was seen for past inundation of the coastline, but could not be conclusively linked to any particular events.

Typhoon Faxai caused severe damages along the western shore of Tokyo Bay, Japan in September 2019. Retaining a relatively small radius of maximum wind, Faxai passed across the center of Tokyo Bay and caused intensive wind and waves. While the sea level anomaly recorded at several tide gauge stations along Tokyo Bay were at most 1 m, and no significant surge-induced inundation was found, locally concentrated damages and wave-induced hazards were observed around Yokohama, on the middle-western shore of Tokyo Bay. The observed inundation height around Yokohama was TP (Tokyo Peil) 4.2 m on average, and the highest runup, TP 10.8 m, was observed at a small hill directly behind the seawall in Fukuura, Yokohama. The estimated wave overtopping directions at each location varied from the northeast to southeast, and no clear correlation was found between the wave overtopping directions and the extent of observed coastal hazards. Based on these findings and investigations of recorded data such as wind and waves, it was deduced that locally concentrated damages and hazards around the middle western shore of Tokyo Bay may be explained by the unique features of a relatively compact Faxai and the topographical characteristics of Tokyo Bay.

An estuary is a dynamic environment where marine and fluvial processes meet to form complex and transient morphology. The estuary morphology is largely determined by net sediment transport by two-way tidal flows, but the hydrodynamics also depends on the morphology of the tidal channels. The estuary inherently accommodates cyclic processes that are internally generated through hydro-morphodynamic interactions. In addition, the estuary evolves in response to changes in external forces by natural and anthropogenic factors. Morphological changes under the different controls often hinder the comprehension of the evolutionary processes of estuaries. Here we explored morphological changes in the Sittang River estuary, Myanmar, which has great morphological dynamism from extreme tidal energy and large sediment inputs, through field surveys and satellite imagery analysis. We identify an autocyclic process in a sedimentary system driving large-scale channel migration in decadal to multidecadal cycles. We show that drastic changes of the estuary morphology occasionally occur with rapid bank erosion through modulation of the cyclic channel migration under conflicting tidal and fluvial forces. This extreme case with minimal human intervention highlights channel migration as a key process in morphological evolution of tide-dominated estuaries undergoing active infilling.