Coastal protection design heights typically consider the superimposed effects of tides, surges, waves, and relative sea-level rise (SLR), neglecting non-linear feedbacks between these forcing factors. Here, we use hydrodynamic modelling and multivariate statistics to show that shallow coastal areas are extremely sensitive to changing non-linear interactions between individual components caused by SLR. As sea-level increases, the depth-limitation of waves relaxes, resulting in waves with larger periods, greater amplitudes, and higher run-up; moreover, depth and frictional changes affect tide, surge, and wave characteristics, altering the relative importance of other risk factors. Consequently, sea-level driven changes in wave characteristics, and to a lesser extent, tides, amplify the resulting design heights by an average of 48–56%, relative to design changes caused by SLR alone. Since many of the world’s most vulnerable coastlines are impacted by depth-limited waves, our results suggest that the overall influence of SLR may be greatly underestimated in many regions.

The detection of potential long-term changes in historical storm statistics and storm surges plays a vitally important role for protecting coastal communities. In the absence of long homogeneous wind records, the authors present a novel, independent, and homogeneous storm surge record based on water level observations in the North Sea since 1843. Storm surges are characterized by considerable interannual-to-decadal variability linked to large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns. Time periods of increased storm surge levels prevailed in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries without any evidence for significant long-term trends. This contradicts with recent findings based on reanalysis data, which suggest increasing storminess in the region since the late nineteenth century. The authors compare the wind and pressure fields from the Twentieth-Century Reanalysis (20CRv2) with the storm surge record by applying state-of-the-art empirical wind surge formulas. The comparison reveals that the reanalysis is a valuable tool that leads to good results over the past 100 yr; previously the statistical relationship fails, leaving significantly lower values in the upper percentiles of the predicted surge time series. These low values lead to significant upward trends over the entire investigation period, which are in turn supported by neither the storm surge record nor an independent circulation index based on homogeneous pressure readings. The authors therefore suggest that these differences are related to higher uncertainties in the earlier years of the 20CRv2 over the North Sea region.

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In this paper, a non-stationary extreme value analysis approach is introduced in order to determine coastal design water levels for future time horizons. The non-stationary statistical approach is based on the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution and a L-Moment parameter estimation as well as a Maximum-Likelihood-estimation. An additional approach considers sea level rise scenarios in the non-stationary extreme value analysis. All the methods are applied to the annual maximum water levels from 1849-2007 at the German North Sea gauge at Cuxhaven. The results show, that the non-stationary GEV approach is suitable for determining coastal design water levels.

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This contribution focuses on presenting the results from analysing mean sea level changes in the German Bight, the south-eastern part of the North Sea. Data sets from 13 tide gauges covering the entire German North Sea coastline and the period from 1843 to 2008 have been used to estimate high quality mean sea level time series. The overall results from nonlinear smoothing and linear trend estimations for different time spans are presented. Time series from single tide gauges are analysed as well as different 'virtual station' time series. An accelerated sea level rise in the German Bight is detected for a period at the end of the 19th century and for another one covering the last decades. In addition, different patterns of sea level change are found in the German Bight compared to global patterns, highlighting the urgent need to derive reliable regional sea level projections to be considered in coastal planning strategies.

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