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4 - Regional storm climate and related marine hazards in the Northeast Atlantic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2009

By
Hans von Storch  and
Ralf Weisse
Edited by
Henry F. Diaz  and
Richard J. Murnane
Hans von Storch
Affiliation:
Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS-Research Centre, 21502, Geesthacht, Germany
Ralf Weisse
Affiliation:
Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS-Research Centre, 21502, Geesthacht, Germany
Henry F. Diaz
Affiliation:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, District of Columbia
Richard J. Murnane
Affiliation:
Bermuda Biological Station for Research, Garrett Park, Maryland
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Summary

Introduction

Storms represent a major environmental threat. They are associated with abundant rainfall and excessive winds. Windstorms cause different types of damage on land and sea. On land, infrastructure, houses, and other structures may be damaged. In forests, trees may break in large numbers. At sea, wind drags water masses towards the coasts, where the water levels may become dangerously high, overwhelm coastal defenses, and inundate low-lying coastal areas. In addition, the sea surface is affected: wind waves are created that eventually transform into swell. Obviously, wind waves represent a major threat for shipping, offshore activities, and coastal defenses.

With these hazards and threats in mind, we attempt to answer a number of questions related to windstorms in the Northeast Atlantic and northern European region:

  1. How can we determine decadal and longer variations in the storm climate? The methodological problem is that many variables, which seem to be well suited for this purpose, are available only for too short a period or suffer from inhomogeneities; i.e., their trends are contaminated by signals related to the observation process (e.g., changes in instrumentation, observational practice, or surrounding environmental conditions). Useful indicators of storm climate variation may be derived from a variety of data, including air pressure readings at weather stations and water level readings at tide gauges.

  2. How has the storm climate developed in the past few decades and past few centuries? Storm activity over the Northeast Atlantic and northern Europe increased for a few decades after the 1960s following an earlier downward trend that started in about 1900. When longer periods are considered (such as by analyzing air pressure readings at stations in Sweden since about 1800), no significant changes are found.

  3. […]

Type
Chapter
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Climate Extremes and Society , pp. 54 - 73
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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