Shift of the storm surge season in Europe due to climate variability

Roustan, Jean‐Baptiste; Pineau‐Guillou, Lucia; Chapron, Bertrand; Raillard, Nicolas; Reinert, Markus

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-12356-5

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Extreme storm surges tend to occur earlier in the year in the south (Portugal/Spain) than in the north (English Channel, UK). A consistent spatio-temporal shift of the timing of the storm surge season over the 2 nd half of the 20th century has recently been reported (Roustan et al, 2022). The storm surge season has tended to occur earlier along the Atlantic coasts of Europe south of 50°N, at an average pace of around 5 days/decade (e.g., a 25-day shift over 1950-2000).…”

Section: Past Sea Level Changessupporting

confidence: 59%

“…Extreme significant wave heights are projected to be significantly larger (up to +40%) at the end of the century under the SSP5-8.5 scenario due to the consideration of mean SLR and tides (Arns et al, 2017;Chaigneau et al, 2023) with implications on wave setup and runup and thus on projections of ESLs. In addition, recent studies have shown, on a global scale and more specifically for Europe, that historical trends in storm surges (Calafat et al, 2022;Reinert et al, 2021;Roustan et al, 2022;Tadesse et al, 2022) and tides (Pineau-Guillou et al, 2021) have been comparable in magnitude to the historical mean SLR trend.…”

Section: Projections Of Dynamic Changes In Extremesmentioning

confidence: 96%

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Sea Level Rise in Europe: Observations and projections

Melet,

van de Wal,

Amores

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Abstract. Sea level rise (SLR) is a major concern for Europe, where 30 million people live in the historical 1-in-100-year event flood coastal plains. The latest IPCC assessment reports provide a literature review on past and projected SLR, and their key findings are synthesized here with a focus on Europe. The present paper complements IPCC reports and contributes to the Knowledge Hub on SLR European Assessment Report. Here, the state of knowledge of observed and 21st century projected SLR and changes in extreme sea levels (ESLs) are documented with more regional information for European basins as scoped with stakeholders. In Europe, satellite altimetry shows that absolute sea level trends are on average slightly above the global mean rate, with only a few areas showing no change or a slight decrease such as central parts of the Mediterranean Sea. The spatial pattern of absolute SLR in European Seas is largely influenced by internal climate modes, especially the North Atlantic Oscillation, which varies on year-to-year to decadal timescales. In terms of relative sea level rise (RSLR), vertical land motions due to human induced subsidence and glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) are important for many coastal European regions, leading to lower or even negative RSLR in the Baltic Sea, and to large rates of RSLR for subsiding coastlines. Projected 21st century local SLR for Europe is broadly in-line with projections of GMSLR rise in most places. Some European coasts are projected to experience a relative SLR by 2100 below the projected GMSLR, such as the Norwegian coast, the southern Baltic Sea, the northern part of the UK and Ireland. A relative sea level fall is projected for the northern Baltic Sea. RSLR along other EU coasts is projected to be slightly above the GMSLR, for instance the Atlantic coasts of Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Higher-resolution regionalized projections are needed to better resolve dynamic sea level changes especially in semi-enclosed basins, such as the Mediterranean Sea, North Sea, Baltic Sea and Black Sea. In addition to ocean dynamics, GIA and Greenland ice mass loss and associated Earth gravity, rotation and deformation effects are important drivers of spatial variations of projected European RSLR. High-end estimates of SLR in Europe are particularly sensitive to uncertainties arising from the estimates of the Antarctic ice mass loss. Regarding ESLs, the frequency of occurrence of the historical centennial event (HCE) level is projected to be amplified for most EU coasts, except along the northern Baltic Sea coasts where a decreasing probability is projected because of relative sea level fall induced by GIA. The largest HCE amplification factors are projected for the southern European Seas (Mediterranean and Iberian Peninsula coasts), while the smallest amplification factors are projected in macro-tidal regions exposed to storms and induced large surges such as the south-eastern North Sea. Finally, an emphasis is given on processes that are especially important for specific regions, such as waves, tides in the north-eastern Atlantic; vertical land motion for the European Arctic and Baltic Sea; seiches, meteo-tsunamis and medicanes in the Mediterranean Sea; non-linear interactions between drivers of coastal sea level extremes in the shallow North Sea.

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Section: Past Sea Level Changessupporting

confidence: 59%

Section: Projections Of Dynamic Changes In Extremesmentioning

confidence: 96%

Sea Level Rise in Europe: Observations and projections

Melet,

van de Wal,

Amores

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…Recently, at larger scale, Roustan et al. (2022) showed that extreme surge events occurred about 4 days/decade later in northern Europe, and 5 days/decade earlier in southern Europe, still on the 1950–2000 period.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2023

Self Cite

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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.

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“…Our estimates of circular mean annual phase indicate that for most of the tide gauges in our global analysis, the ASLC peaks during the fall season, which overlaps with the most active storm seasons in the Pacific and Atlantic basins (Oey & Chou, 2016;Roustan et al, 2022). To identify where the phase deviates from its mean over time, we map the circular standard deviation of the phase (Figure 5b).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observed Spatiotemporal Variability in the Annual Sea Level Cycle Along the Global Coast

Barroso,

Wahl,

et al. 2024

JGR Oceans

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Changes in the seasonal sea level cycle can modulate the flooding risk along coastlines. Here, we use harmonic analysis to quantify changes in the amplitude and phase of the annual component of the sea level cycle at 798 tide gauge locations along the global coastline where long records are available. We identify coastal hotspots by applying clustering methods revealing coherent regions with similar patterns of variability in the annual sea level cycle. Results show that for most tide gauges the annual amplitude reached its maximum after 1970 and its peak typically occurs during the fall season of the respective hemisphere. Many tide gauges exhibit non‐stationarity in the annual cycle in terms of amplitude and/or phase. For example, at 226 tide gauges we find significant trends in the amplitude (either increasing or decreasing) for the time period after 1970; while several sites (50 in total), mostly in the Mediterranean and around Pacific islands, experienced phase changes leading to shifts in the timing of the peak of the annual cycle by more than a month over their entire record. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for potential non‐stationarity in seasonal mean sea level cycles along coastlines.

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Shift of the storm surge season in Europe due to climate variability

Cited by 8 publications

References 37 publications

Sea Level Rise in Europe: Observations and projections

Sea Level Rise in Europe: Observations and projections

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

Observed Spatiotemporal Variability in the Annual Sea Level Cycle Along the Global Coast

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