Seasonal outlooks for coastal high-tide flooding

Ryan Holmes (), Océane Richet, Ben Hague, Grant Smith and Claire Spillman
Additional contact information
Ryan Holmes: Bureau of Meteorology
Océane Richet: Bureau of Meteorology
Ben Hague: Bureau of Meteorology
Grant Smith: Bureau of Meteorology
Claire Spillman: Bureau of Meteorology

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2025, vol. 121, issue 16, No 23, 18969-18996

Abstract: Abstract Chronic “high-tide” flooding is a growing concern for coastal communities in Australia and globally as sea levels rise. Early warnings of such events can help coastal managers prepare for their impacts. Building on previous work, we construct predictions of daily coastal sea level and threshold exceedance probability that provide information on high-tide flooding risks over the coming season/s. Our trial forecast system combines tide predictions and relative sea level rise projections with statistical representations of storm surges and ensemble monthly-mean sea level anomaly predictions from a dynamical seasonal forecast model. We assess the system’s performance at tide gauges around the Australian coastline and in the western Pacific islands. The system out-performs tide-only and climatological reference forecasts for daily maximum sea level at all locations, and beats a best constant reference forecast for 99th percentile threshold exceedance probability at most locations. Including seasonal sea level anomaly predictions from the dynamical model improves performance by up to $$\sim \,20$$ ∼ 20 % in north-west Australia and $$\sim \,40$$ ∼ 40 % in the Pacific islands, decreasing with lead time. Introducing a reliability calibration significantly improves threshold exceedance forecast skill at locations with complex tidal dynamics where harmonic tide predictions struggle to capture the highest high tides. We show that forecast skill is sensitive to the choice of impact-based (e.g., minor) or likelihood-based (e.g., 99th percentile) flood threshold, highlighting the importance of defining locally-relevant thresholds for application of the warning system. The development of real-time forecast guidance products to suit a range of potential stakeholders, from emergency services and meteorological agencies to coastal and ecosystem managers and port authorities, is ongoing.

Keywords: Coastal flooding; Seasonal prediction; Forecast verification; Sea level rise (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11069-025-07548-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:121:y:2025:i:16:d:10.1007_s11069-025-07548-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-025-07548-x

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().