Research on methods of forecasting storm surges on the east and south coasts of Great Britain

Recent work at the Tidal Institute has provided means of predicting storm surges at the River Tyne entrance, Immingham, King's Lynn, Lowestoft and Southend in the North Sea and Newhaven in the English Channel, from meteorological forecasts. An investigation of surges at Aberdeen has not resulted in a completely satisfactory method of predicting external surges, which are generated outside the North Sea, so that their effects at ports further south have been allowed for by observing their magnitude at Aberdeen and applying an empirical rule which governs their amplification and rate of travel, after Corkan (1948). The disturbances generated inside the North Sea proper, at all the other North Sea ports except King's Lynn, have been correlated at intervals of 6 hr with quantities representing the tractive force of the gradient winds at chosen points in the sea, assuming a quadratic law of friction. The success of the formulae so produced is fully illustrated. For King's Lynn, tide and surge have been treated as an entity, and high‐ and low‐water heights have been expressed as functions of the corresponding heights at the River Tyne and the local wind strength and direction. The propagation of North Sea surges through the Straits of Dover has been studied using Newhaven observations, and it is shown that they travel from Lowestoft as free progressive waves, being attenuated by half. Depressions in the western approaches to the English Channel are also shown to be responsible for disturbances at Newhaven.