Interpreting century-scale changes in southern North Sea storm surge climate derived from coupled model simulations

Howard, Tom; Lowe, Jason; Horsburgh, Kevin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4803-9919. 2010 Interpreting century-scale changes in southern North Sea storm surge climate derived from coupled model simulations. Journal of Climate, 23. 6234-6247. 10.1175/2010JCLI3520.1

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Abstract/Summary

This paper describes numerical experiments using a climate storm surge simulation system for the coast of the United Kingdom with a particular focus on the southern North Sea and the Thames estuary in southeastern England Time series of surges simulated in the southern North Sea by a surge model driven by atmospheric data from a regional climate model and surges simulated by the same surge model driven by atmospheric data from a global climate model are compared A strong correspondence is demonstrated and a linear scaling factor relating them is derived This factor vanes slowly with location Around the Thames estuary extreme surges are compared in the same way and the linear scaling factor for the extremes is found to be similar to that for the full time series. The authors therefore assert that in seeking significant trends in surge at this location using this model arrangement, the regional model downscaling stage could be avoided if observations were used to establish a suitable scaling factor for each location. The influence of the tide surge phase relationship is investigated, and extreme sea levels at the mouth of the River Thames from regional model driven simulations are compared to the extreme event of 1953. Although the simulated levels are slightly lower, they are found to be comparable given the observational uncertainty. The assumption that time mean sea level changes can be added linearly to surge changes is investigated at this location for large changes in time mean sea level The authors find that the primary effect of such an increase is on the speed of propagation of tide and surge supporting the case for a simple linear addition of mean and extreme sea level changes

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.1175/2010JCLI3520.1
Programmes:	Oceans 2025 > Climate, ocean circulation and sea level
ISSN:	0894-8755
Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:	This work was supported by the Environment Agency through the Thames Estuary 2100 project and by the Joint DECC and Defra Integrated Climate Programme, DECC/Defra (Contract Number GA01101) Copyright 2010 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and BRIEF excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that is determined to be "fair Use" under section 107 of the US Copyright Act or that it satisfies the conditions specified in 108 of the US Copyright Act (17 USC Section 108 as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS's permission. Or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted in the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in teh AMS Copyright policy, available on the AMS website located at http://www.ametsoc.org/ or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyright@ametsoc.org
Additional Keywords:	SEA LEVEL; STORM SURGES; NORTH SEA
NORA Subject Terms:	Marine Sciences
Date made live:	23 Feb 2011 16:14 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/13609

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