1. Dimensions of coastal research
Hans von Storch
Institute of Coastal Research
Geesthacht, Germany
50 min‘s
23 June 2013 – Ocean University of China, Qingdao

2. Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht (HZG) Centre for Materials and Coastal Research
Non-university public research centre
Staff: > 900, located in Geesthacht/Hamburg and in Teltow/Berlin
Funding: > 90 M € p.a.: 9:1 split between Federal and Regional (Länder) authorities, e.g. Hamburg
National Lab within the Helmholtz-Association (Budget: > 3 Bn €)
HZG- Research Portfolio: 1/3 Coastal and Climate Research, 2/3 Materials Research:
Preserve resources and guarantee mobility through light-weight and multifunctional materials
Enable regenerative therapies through new biomaterials
Help society to cope with natural
and anthropogenic changes in global
and regional coastal systems
HZG - Kaysser - PACES II - 05 March 2013

3. Hans von Storch Who is this?
Director of Institute for Coastal Research, Helmholtz Zentrum Geesthacht (HZG), near Hamburg,
Professor at the Meteorological Institute of Hamburg University
Works also with social and cultural scientists.
Who is this? 3

4. Describing, assessing and envisaging changing costal hazards
Coasts – a contested social issue: different perceptions and values
Role of science in managing coastal risks
Describing state and change
Assessing change – what are the drivers of change?
Determining options for future configurations – scenarios of drivers and responses

5. Coasts have undergone significant changes in the past centuries and decades. In the past, the usage of the coastal seas was mostly unregulated.
Nowadays a detailed planning of the coast sea area is prepared, with regulated usage in different parts, such as natural preservation, shipping, tourism and wind energy. This transformation did not happen without broad public debates and conflicts. These conflicts were based on very different perceptions of what the coast is and what it should be.

6. Coasts provide a large variety of services and goods

7. RADARSAT ScanSAR Image 9.June1996

8. Shipping

9. Fishing

10. Off shore industry

11. Energy

12. mariculture

13. tourism

14. Discharge of waste

15. Military use

16. Coasts are perceived by different societal groups differently

17. manageable Natural science „The coast can be computed and
is manageable.“
manageable

18. endagered Environmentalists „Man is destroying nature.“
Der Mensch zerstört
die Küste

19. unadulterated Health industry / tourism
„The coast is natural. Its purity and originality makes it a place for relaxation, mental and bodily recovery.“
unadulterated

20. externally controlled
Local interests
externally controlled
„Locals know what is best for their region. They
don‘t need governmental regulations.“

21. threatening Coastal safety
„Nature needs to be controlled to ensure safety.“

22. Voss, pers. comm.

23. Role of Coastal Research
Coasts need to be managed.
Management needs a scientific basis.
Task I: Short term events and emerging risks – monitoring and short term prediction.
Task II: Determining, describing and assessing ongoing and possible future long-term change
Natural and social/cultural sciences needed for guiding the process of exploiting the full potential of the coastal zone in future economies and societies.

24. Task I: Monitoring the state and the change of the coastal environment
Affordable
Reliable
Holistic
High-tech economic enterprise.

25. Task I: Monitoring the state and the change of the coastal environment
COSYNA (Coastal Observing System for Northern and Arctic Seas) is a synoptic observing system for the environmental status of the North Sea. Numerous automatic in situ and satellite observations are continuously assimilated in models, thus producing hourly real-time forecasts of high quality.
The data are used by science, industry, and authorities.
Nordsee
Land-Meer-Interaktionen
Räumliche und zeitliche
Variabilität
Trends
Events, Risiken
Photo: NASA

26. Operational COSYNA Products
Actual state & forecast:
current
waves
salinity
temperature
turbidity / chlorophyll
Application:
oil spills/chemical accidents
toxic algal blooms
wind farms
Nordsee
Land-Meer-Interaktionen
Räumliche und zeitliche
Variabilität
Trends
Events, Risiken
Photo: NASA

27. Product Currents Nordsee Land-Meer-Interaktionen
Räumliche und zeitliche
Variabilität
Trends
Events, Risiken
Photo: NASA

28. Technology example: Ferry box Detection of short term events
„Ferrybox“ for the in-situ measurements of water quality parameters on the ferry Cuxhaven-Immingham
Salinities from all FB transects in 2008
Freshwater lens emanated from Rhine estuary
Weiße Flächen 28

29. Task II: Determining, describing and assessing on going and possible future long-term change
Coastal conditions and utilizations is permanently changing.
Part of the recent change is due to natural processes, another part is man-made.
Risks in and utility of coastal zones undergo variations because of these changes.
Among the drivers of this change are local modifications (such as dredging shipping channels) and global changes (in particular climate change)
Societal decisions (mitigation / adaptation) on how to deal with such changing risks and utility are political, and will be based on social values (such as economic growth, protection of environmental conditions).
Coastal science contributes to the knowledge base of such decisions, by explaining ongoing and possible future changes, their links to drivers, and options/perspectives for the future.
Coastal science is not part of the decision process itself.

30. Dynamical downscaling to obtain high-resolution (25-50 km grid; 1 hourly) description of weather stream. - use of NCEP re-analysis allows reconstruction of regional weather in past decades ( ) - when global scenarios are used, regional scenarios with better description of space/time detail can be downscaled.
Meteorological data are fed into dynamical models of weather-sensitive systems, such as ocean waves or long-range pollution.
Integration area used in HZG reconstruction and regional scenarios

31. Extreme wind events simulated compared to local observations
simuliert
These plots are the quantile-quantile diagrams (REMO & NCEP Vs Observations) for 10-m wind speed at 2 buoys station. The first one is an Atlantic offshore buoy (ZBGSO, located at
48.7N,12.40W), already assimilated by NCEP. The second one shows results from a Mediterranean buoy (ZATOS, located at 39.96N, 24.72E, Aegean Sea), whose data have NOT been previously assimilated by NCEP.

32. Red: buoy, yellow: radar, blue: wave model run with REMO winds
significant wave height
[days]
wave direction
[days]
Red: buoy, yellow: radar, blue: wave model run with REMO winds
Gerd Gayer, pers. comm., 2001

33. Changing significant wave height, 1958-2002
waves
wind
waves
Yantai, 18 June 2007

34. Interannual variability of mean water levels
(Weisse and Plüß 2006)
Annual mean winter high waters Cuxhaven red – reconstruction, black – observations
Note failure to describe long term trend in sea level rise: not caused by regional meteorological drivers!

35. Regional scenarios of maximum sustained winds for Northern Germany
Range of changes in seasonal maximum wind (10 m) in Northern Germany in a series of dynamically downscaled scenarios (HadCM, MPI; A2, B2)

36. Storm surge height scenarios 2030, 2085
Only the effect of changing weather conditions is considered, not the effect of water works such as dredging the shipping channel.
Woth, pers. comm.

37. The CoastDat-effort at the Institute for Coastal Research@HZG
Long-term, high-resolution reconstructions (60 years) of present and recent developments of weather related phenomena in coastal regions as well as scenarios of future developments (100 years)
Northeast Atlantic and northern Europe.
Assessment of changes in storms, ocean waves, storm surges, currents and regional transport of anthropogenic substances.
Extension to other regions and to ecological parameters.
Applications
many authorities with responsibilities for different aspects of the German coasts
economic applications by engineering companies (off-shore wind potentials and risks) and shipbuilding company
Public information 37

38. Some applications of Navigational safety Offshore wind
Ship design
Navigational safety
Offshore wind
Interpretation of measurements
Oils spill risk and chronic oil pollution
Ocean energy
Scenarios of storm surge conditions
Scenarios of future wave conditions
Wave Energy Flux [kW/m]
Currents Power [W/m2] 38

39. Not all changes in observational records describe real large-scale or climate change effects

40. Homogeneity of local observations (Wind speed measurement; SYNOP Measuring net of German Weather service; Coastal stations at the German Bight; Observation period: )
Causes of inhomogenities:
Changes in
Instruments
Sampling frequencies
Measuring units
Environments (e.g. trees, buildings)
Station relocations (Dotted lines)
Lindenberg et al., 2011

41. Inomogeneity of wind data

42. Storm surges in Hamburg
45 min‘s
· Ideally a review of the methods employed in your field to detect and analyze change and feedbacks, finishing off with what the state of the art is in the methods and suggestions for newer methods that might be transferable to hydrologic extremes
· We are most interested in the methods you employ rather than a possible synthesis with hydrology
· Summarize the challenges you are facing detecting and analyzing change and feedbacks and assigning causality to them

43. Difference of storm surge heights Hamburg - Cuxhaven
Hamburg – Storm surges
Difference of storm surge heights Hamburg - Cuxhaven
45 min‘s
· Ideally a review of the methods employed in your field to detect and analyze change and feedbacks, finishing off with what the state of the art is in the methods and suggestions for newer methods that might be transferable to hydrologic extremes
· We are most interested in the methods you employ rather than a possible synthesis with hydrology
· Summarize the challenges you are facing detecting and analyzing change and feedbacks and assigning causality to them
inhomogeneous

44. Losses from Atlantic Hurricanes
The increase in damages related to extreme weather conditions is massive – but is it because the weather is getting worse?
Losses from Atlantic Hurricanes
“Great Miami”, 1926, Florida, Alamaba – damages of 2005 usage - in 2005 money: 139 b$
Katrina, 2005: 81 b$
Pielke, Jr., R.A., Gratz, J., Landsea, C.W., Collins, D., Saunders, M., and Musulin, R., Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: Natural Hazards Review
„Storms are getting worse“

45. Urban Heat Island effect in Stockholm
Average diurnal cycle of UHI (urban heat island) intensity for the whole year, winter months (DJF), spring months (MAM), summer months (JJA) and autumn months (SON) for 1996 to 2009
Mean UHI intensity 1.2 °C
Maximum measured UHI intensity 12.9 °C
Maximum temperature differences urban-rural in warm season
Michael Richter

46. Regional attribution
The issue is deconstructing a given record with the intention to identify „predictable“ components.
„Predictable“
-- either natural processes, which are known of having limited life times,
-- or man-made processes, which are subject to decisions (e.g., GHG, urban effect)
For global and regional temperatures, this has been done, and the ongoing warming can not be explaining without considering elevated levels of GHG concentrations as a key cause.

47. Regional attribution
Not systematically pursued on regional and local scales (see Mini-IPCC Report on Baltic Sea Climate Change knowledge, BACC).
Regional manifestations of climate change
enhanced concentrations of greenhouse gases?
reduction of industrial aerosols?
effect of changing land-use (e.g., urban effects)?
So far no tools available for determining possible regional signals in recent decades related to land use change and diminished aerosol loads.
Local changes
- Import of alien species; pollution, fishing and other uses
- Changing morphodynamic conditions (e.g., storm surges in Hamburg)

48. Regional climate con/dis-sensus reports
Assessments of knowledge about regional climate change - for the recent past (200 years), for present change and possible future change - consensus of what is scientifically documented - documentation of contested issues. for + Baltic Sea (BACC) – BACC 1 done in 2008, BACC expected in Hamburg region (published November 2010) + North Sea (NOSCCA, expected in 2014)

49. Tools: temporal consistency
Are present changes indicators of future changes?
To do so, one may compare the change in the past, say, 30 years with the change envisaged by the scenario calculations.
This has not often been done systematically - one case being temperature and precipitation in the Baltic Sea catchment.
It is found that the ongoing temperature change is broadly consistent with the future expectation, but that the consistency is limited for precipitation.
Observed (CRU3, GPCC6, GPCP)
Projected GS signal (ENSEMBLES)

50. Conclusion There is ubiquitous coastal change.
Usage of coastal zones is subject to societal conflicts and political decisions.
Coastal science provides a knowledge base for such decisions, but can not really help in deciding value-based conflicts.
One key task of coastal research is the provision of technics and methods for monitoring short term conditions
Another is to determine ongoing change, assess drivers and envisage options and possibilities.