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Surge analysis from Belfast Harbour tide gauge

Extreme tidal surge events, which are usually associated with severe storms, are of greater concern to coastal management than the slow inundation expected by century scale sea level change attributed to global warming.

Current climate change forecasts for Northern Ireland are grossly inadequate due to a paucity of environmental data (i.e. there is limited historical and spatial records of sea level change). The extreme of the range of coastal-water level has been identified for the north coast of Northern Ireland based on empirical analysis of the Malin Head tide gauge, but there is a lack of similar data for storm surges on the east coast. Furthermore, recent forecasting of storm surge frequency for Belfast Lough was based on models that are likely to suffer error due to non-empirical data sources. Without quantitative evidence of short-term extreme sea-level due to storm forcing, future forecasts of coastal extremes in Northern Ireland will be inadequate.

However, good empirical data does exist for Belfast Harbour but remains unexplored or analysed. This 3 year project, funded by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) through the Natural Heritage Research Partnership (NHRP), aims to:

1.       Digitise existing analogue tidal gauge traces from 1880 to the present at 15min intervals

2.       Construct a surge calendar which identifies surges and allows extreme events to be identified

3.       Identify surge variation and periodicity

4.       Establish event-meteorology associated with extreme storm surges

5.       Scope forcing parameters that assist in extreme coastal water-level forecasting e.g. the NAO