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Title: Long-term trends in storm surge climate derived from an ensemble of global surge reconstructions

Journal Article · · Scientific Reports
ORCiD logo [1];  [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3];  [4]; ORCiD logo [5]
  1. University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL (United States)
  2. University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL (United States); The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA (United States)
  3. Tulane University, New Orleans, LA (United States)
  4. University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL (United States); Vrije University, Amsterdam (Netherlands)
  5. California Polytechnic State University (CalPoly), San Luis Obispo, CA (United States)
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We address the challenge, due to sparse observational records, of investigating long-term changes in the storm surge climate globally. We use two centennial and three satellite-era daily storm surge time series from the Global Storm Surge Reconstructions (GSSR) database and assess trends in the magnitude and frequency of extreme storm surge events at 320 tide gauges across the globe from 1930, 1950, and 1980 to present. Before calculating trends, we perform change point analysis to identify and remove data where inhomogeneities in atmospheric reanalysis products could lead to spurious trends in the storm surge data. Even after removing unreliable data, the database still extends existing storm surge records by several decades for most of the tide gauges. Storm surges derived from the centennial 20CR and ERA-20C atmospheric reanalyses show consistently significant positive trends along the southern North Sea and the Kattegat Bay regions during the periods from 1930 and 1950 onwards and negative trends since 1980 period. When comparing all five storm surge reconstructions and observations for the overlapping 1980–2010 period we find overall good agreement, but distinct differences along some coastlines, such as the Bay of Biscay and Australia. We also assess changes in the frequency of extreme surges and find that the number of annual exceedances above the 95th percentile has increased since 1930 and 1950 in several regions such as Western Europe, Kattegat Bay, and the US East Coast.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Central Florida, Orlando, FL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Science Foundation (NSF); National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Grant/Contract Number:
80NSSC18K0743; 80NSSC20K1241; ICER‐1854896
OSTI ID:
1904023
Journal Information:
Scientific Reports, Vol. 12, Issue 1; ISSN 2045-2322
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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