Chris E. Zervas

Oceans, 2005: Proceedings of Marine Technology Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Published date September 19, 2005

Response of Extreme Storm Tide Levels to Long-term Sea Level Change

  • Finds that the monthly highest and lowest water levels at 117 NOAA/National Ocean Service water level stations show a clear response to local mean sea level trends
  • Adjusts the extreme levels reached by hurricanes and extra-tropical storms of the past for sea level trend
  • Derives a data set of the annual highest and lowest water levels from the monthly data and uses this to determine the expected frequency of future storm tides rising above or falling below any given level
  • Applies the same analysis to the data for each individual month to estimate the varying likelihood of extreme high or low levels by season
  • The results are a set of annual and monthly exceedance probability levels relative to the tidal datums for each station
  • States the information should prove useful for identifying, in real time, when a rare event threshold has been crossed