  The present article is a study of the applicability of different sources of
meteorological forcing for the coastal wave and storm surge models, which
provide the operational marine forecasts for the coastal early warning systems
(EWS) and are used for reconstructions of historical storms. The reconstruction
of historical storms is one of the approaches to the natural coastal hazard
vulnerability assessment. We evaluate the importance of the input
meteorological information for the mentioned types of coastal models. For two
well documented historical storms, that caused significant damages along the
Bulgarian coast we simulate the significant wave heights and sea level change,
using SWAN wave model and a storm surge model. The wind and mean sea level
pressure fields, which are used in the present study, are extracted from the
ERA Interim reanalysis of the European Center for Medium range Forecasts
(ECMWF) and from the output of the high resolution limited area numerical
weather prediction model ALADIN. The overall conclusion is that for the
successful historical storms reconstructions ERA Interim and ERA40 reanalysis
are valuable source of meteorological forcing, but due to their limitations in
terms of spatial and temporal resolution, it is recommended to produce a higher
spatial and temporal resolution meteorological fields, using dynamical
downscaling of the reanalyzed data.
