Characteristics of Storm Surge Events Along the North‐East Atlantic Coasts

Abstract

Storm surges are often characterized in terms of magnitude, duration and frequency. Here, we propose a novel statistical method to help characterize the full dynamics of storm surge events. The method, called ECHAR, is based on techniques already successfully applied in astrophysics. Analysis of 20 tide gauges in the North‐East Atlantic consistently reveals that storm surge events display two distinctive components, a slow‐time background Gaussian structure and a fast‐time Laplace structure. Each of these structures can be reduced to its duration and amplitude. For large events, occurring 5 times per winter, the slow‐time structure lasts around 16 days, varying from 9 days in the South to 45 days in the North (Baltic Sea), with almost the same amplitude at all the stations (around 0.17 m). The fast‐time structure lasts around 1.7 days at all the stations, but its amplitude greatly varies, from 0.1 m in the South to 1.6 m in the North Sea. The wind stress contributes mostly to the fast‐time component of the storm surge event, whereas the atmospheric pressure contributes to both components. The proposed ECHAR method, helping to characterize extreme events, can be applied anywhere else in the global ocean, for example, where tropical storm surges occur.

Underestimation of extremes in sea level surge reconstruction

“…4 to consider the effect of adding the wind stress to the SLP-based linear model). This result is fully consistent with analysis reported by Pineau-Guillou et al 36 : storm surge events generally display both fast-time and slow-time components, with the wind stress contributing mostly to the fast-time component.…”

Global Projections of Storm Surges Using High‐Resolution CMIP6 Climate Models

“…Next, we derive estimates for various return periods (e.g., 10-, 25-, 50-, and 100-year). Following previous large-scale studies (Cid et al, 2015;Marcos & Woodworth, 2017;Pineau-Guillou et al, 2023;Vousdoukas et al, 2016Vousdoukas et al, , 2018Wahl et al, 2017), we ensure independence between storm events by using a 72 hr period for the de-clustering of the peaks (Vousdoukas et al, 2018). We consider this an appropriate threshold given that the duration of a storm duration is typically less than 3 days.…”

Improving Coastal Storm Surge Monitoring Through Joint Modeling Based on Permanent and Temporary Tide Gauges

“…Feng & Tsimplis, 2014;Wahl et al, 2017) for coastal adaptation measures or to analyze the characteristics of different components of ESLs (J. Feng et al, 2023;Lowe et al, 2021;Menéndez & Woodworth, 2010;Pineau-Guillou et al, 2023). However, all these studies are limited to a station scale due to the sparseness and uneven distribution of TGs.…”

“…To date, tide gauge (TG) stations are the only means to monitor high‐frequency and continuous in situ ESLs. Their records are used to estimate the return levels of extreme SSs (Baldan et al., 2022; Boumis et al., 2023; Buchanan et al., 2017; Fang et al., 2021; X. Feng & Tsimplis, 2014; Wahl et al., 2017) for coastal adaptation measures or to analyze the characteristics of different components of ESLs (J. Feng et al., 2023; Lowe et al., 2021; Menéndez & Woodworth, 2010; Pineau‐Guillou et al., 2023). However, all these studies are limited to a station scale due to the sparseness and uneven distribution of TGs.…”