Trends in high sea levels of German North Sea gauges compared to regional mean sea level changes

Mudersbach, Christoph; Wahl, Thomas; Haigh, Ivan D.; Jensen, Jürgen

doi:10.1016/j.csr.2013.06.016

Cited by 59 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The study showed in addition that the periods of high storm activity furthermore coincided with positive decadal trends in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index (Hurrell 1995). A similar NAO link and strong decadal trends are also visible in extreme sea levels in the southeastern North Sea (Dangendorf et al 2013a;Mudersbach et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 68%

“…Global MSL has risen through the last century (e.g., Church and White 2011) and is expected to rise also through the twenty-first century, potentially at an accelerated rate (e.g., Slangen et al 2012), shifting the entire distribution of extreme sea levels on a higher base level (Hunter 2010). MSL changes in the North Sea region were recently reviewed by Wahl et al (2013). While an ongoing sea level rise is evident, changes in atmospheric circulation and storminess are presently more uncertain (Weisse and von Storch 2010, and references therein).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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North Sea Storminess from a Novel Storm Surge Record since AD 1843*

et al. 2014

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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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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

North Sea Storminess from a Novel Storm Surge Record since AD 1843*

et al. 2014

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“…Grinsted et al (2012) also observed decreases in storm surge activity along the northeast US coast, but Talke et al (2014) found evidence for an increase in annual maximum storm tide (which includes the tidal component) at New York. Significant differences between the trends in ESL and MSL have been observed for several other regions, including: the Mediterranean, at Camargue (Ullmann et al, 2007), Venice (Lionello et al, 2005), and Trieste (Raicich, 2003); the German Bight (Müdersbach et al, 2013); and sites along the western coastline of North America (Bromirski et al, 2003;Abeysirigunawardena and Walker, 2008;Cayan et al, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several recent studies have found significant trends in tidal levels and tidal constituents along the coasts of the USA or in the German Bight (e.g., Jay, 2009;Ray, 2009;Woodworth, 2010;Müdersbach et al, 2013;Mawdsley et al, 2015), and these changes in the tide may have contributed toward the observed changes in ESL at some sites. To determine changes in storm surge activity accurately any non-meteorological influence, such as non-meteorological MSL fluctuations, tidal variations and tide-surge interactions, should be removed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial and Temporal Variability and Long-Term Trends in Skew Surges Globally

Mawdsley

Haigh

2016

Front. Mar. Sci.

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Storm surges and the resulting extreme high sea levels are among the most dangerous natural disasters and are responsible for widespread social, economic and environmental consequences. Using a set of 220 tide gauges, this paper investigates the temporal variations in storm surges around the world and the spatial coherence of its variability. We compare results derived from two parameters used to represent storm surge: skew surge and the more traditional, non-tidal residual. We determine the extent of tide-surge interaction, at each study site, and find statistically significant (95% confidence) levels of tide-surge interaction at 59% of sites based on tidal level and 81% of sites based on tidal-phase. The tide-surge interaction was strongest in regions of shallow bathymetry such as the North Sea, north Australia and the Malay Peninsula. At most sites the trends in the skew surge time series were similar to those of non-tidal residuals, but where there were large differences in trends, the sites tended to have a large tidal range. Only 13% of sites had a statistically significant trend in skew surge, and of these approximately equal numbers were positive and negative. However, for trends in the non-tidal residual there were significantly more negative trends. We identified 8 regions where there were strong positive correlations in skew surge variability between sites, which meant that a regional index could be created to represent these groups of sites. Despite strong correlations between some regional skew surge indices, none were significant at the 95% level, however, at the 80% level there was significant positive correlation between the north-west Atlantic-south and the North Sea. Correlations between the regional skew surge indices and climate indices only became significant at the 80% level, where Niń o 4 was positively correlated with the Gulf of Mexico skew surge index and negatively correlated with the east Australia skew surge index. The inclusion of autocorrelation in the calculation of correlation greatly reduced their significance, especially in the short time-series used for the regional skew surge indices. Skew surge improved the representation of storm surge magnitudes, and therefore allows a more accurate detection of changes on secular and inter-annual time scales.

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“…Lowe et al, 2009), changes in the tidal constituents or tidal range (e.g. Mudersbach et al, 2013;Woodworth, 2010;Müller et al, 2011;Pickering et al, 2012) and changes in the seasonal cycle (e.g. Wahl et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sources of 21st century regional sea-level rise along the coast of northwest Europe

et al. 2014

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Abstract. Changes in both global and regional mean sea level, and changes in the magnitude of extreme flood heights, are the result of a combination of several distinct contributions most, but not all, of which are associated with climate change. These contributions include effects in the solid earth, gravity field, changes in ocean mass due to ice loss from ice sheets and glaciers, thermal expansion, alterations in ocean circulation driven by climate change and changing freshwater fluxes, and the intensity of storm surges. Due to the diverse range of models required to simulate these systems, the contributions to sea-level change have usually been discussed in isolation rather than in one self-consistent assessment. Focusing on the coastline of northwest Europe, we consider all the processes mentioned above and their relative impact on 21st century regional mean sea levels and the 50-year return flood height. As far as possible our projections of change are derived from process-based models forced by the A1B emissions scenario to provide a self-consistent comparison of the contributions. We address uncertainty by considering both a mid-range and an illustrative high-end combination of the different components.For our mid-range ice loss scenario we find that thermal expansion of seawater is the dominant contributor to change in northwest European sea level by 2100. However, the projected contribution to extreme sea level, due to changes in storminess alone, is in some places significant and comparable to the global mean contribution of thermal expansion. For example, under the A1B emissions scenario, by 2100, change in storminess contributes around 15 cm to the increase in projected height of the 50-year storm surge on the west coast of the Jutland Peninsula, compared with a contribution of around 22 cm due to thermal expansion and a total of 58 cm from all of the contributions we consider. An illustrative combination of our high-end projections suggests increases in the 50-year return level of 86 cm at Sheerness, 95 cm at Roscoff, 106 cm at Esbjerg, and 67cm at Bergen. The notable regional differences between these locations arise primarily from differences in the rates of vertical land movement and changes in storminess.

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Trends in high sea levels of German North Sea gauges compared to regional mean sea level changes

Cited by 59 publications

References 34 publications

North Sea Storminess from a Novel Storm Surge Record since AD 1843*

North Sea Storminess from a Novel Storm Surge Record since AD 1843*

Spatial and Temporal Variability and Long-Term Trends in Skew Surges Globally

Sources of 21st century regional sea-level rise along the coast of northwest Europe

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