UKCP09: Climate change projections of storm surge trend for UK waters

The UKCP09 marine & coastal storm surge data provides projections of surge height for the linear trend, the 5th and 95th percentiles throughout the 21st Century for 2, 10, 20 and 50 year return period events (including statistical significance) over a 12km coastal grid. Data are available for a medium emissions scenario (IPCC SRES: A1B), to reflect some aspects of the uncertainty in modelling global and regional climate change eleven different variants of the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model HadCM3 were used to drive eleven corresponding variants of the HadRM3 regional model, which in turn drove the National Oceanography Centre storm surge model (POLCS3). Note: The projections do not cover all plausible future outcomes and unlike some other components of UKCP09, the storm surge height projections are not probabilistic, although a range is provided based on the assumption that the 11 simulations are equally likely. More information about the storm surge methodology (including assumptions and caveats) are given in Chapter 4 of the UKCP09 Marine & coastal projections report and the technical note on storm projections.