Rescuing historical weather observations improves quantification of severe windstorm risks
Rescuing historical weather observations improves quantification of severe windstorm risks
Billions of historical climatological observations remain unavailable to science as they exist only on paper, stored in numerous archives around the world. The conversion of these data from paper to digital could transform our understanding of historical climate variations, including extreme weather events. Here we demonstrate how the rescue of such paper observations has improved our understanding of a severe windstorm that occurred in February 1903 and its significant impacts. By assimilating newly rescued atmospheric pressure observations, the storm is now credibly represented in an improved reanalysis of the event. In some locations this storm produced stronger winds than any event during the modern period (1950–2015) and it is in the top-4 storms for strongest winds anywhere over land in England and Wales. As a result, estimates of risk from severe storms, based on modern period data, may need to be revised. Examining the atmospheric structure of the storm suggests that it is a classic Shapiro–Keyser-type cyclone with “sting-jet” precursors and associated extreme winds at locations and times of known significant damage. Comparison with both independent observations and qualitative information, such as photographs and written accounts, provides additional evidence of the credibility of the atmospheric reconstruction, including sub-daily rainfall variations. Simulations of the storm surge resulting from this storm show a large coastal surge of around 2.5 m, comparing favourably with newly rescued tide gauge observations and adding to our confidence in the reconstruction. Combining historical rescued weather observations with modern reanalysis techniques has allowed us to plausibly reconstruct a severe windstorm and associated storm surge from more than 100 years ago, establishing an invaluable end-to-end tool to improve assessments of risks from extreme weather.
1465–1482
Hawkins, Ed.
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Brohan, Philip
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Burgess, Samantha N.
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Burt, Stephen
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Compo, Gilbert P.
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Gray, Suzanne L.
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Haigh, Ivan D.
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Hersbach, Hans
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Kuijjer, Kiki
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Martínez-Alvarado, Oscar
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McColl, Chesley
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Schurer, Andrew P.
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Slivinski, Laura
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Williams, Joanne
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24 April 2023
Hawkins, Ed.
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Brohan, Philip
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Burgess, Samantha N.
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Burt, Stephen
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Compo, Gilbert P.
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Gray, Suzanne L.
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Haigh, Ivan D.
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Hersbach, Hans
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Kuijjer, Kiki
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Martínez-Alvarado, Oscar
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McColl, Chesley
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Schurer, Andrew P.
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Slivinski, Laura
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Williams, Joanne
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Hawkins, Ed., Brohan, Philip, Burgess, Samantha N., Burt, Stephen, Compo, Gilbert P., Gray, Suzanne L., Haigh, Ivan D., Hersbach, Hans, Kuijjer, Kiki, Martínez-Alvarado, Oscar, McColl, Chesley, Schurer, Andrew P., Slivinski, Laura and Williams, Joanne
(2023)
Rescuing historical weather observations improves quantification of severe windstorm risks.
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 23 (4), .
(doi:10.5194/nhess-23-1465-2023).
Abstract
Billions of historical climatological observations remain unavailable to science as they exist only on paper, stored in numerous archives around the world. The conversion of these data from paper to digital could transform our understanding of historical climate variations, including extreme weather events. Here we demonstrate how the rescue of such paper observations has improved our understanding of a severe windstorm that occurred in February 1903 and its significant impacts. By assimilating newly rescued atmospheric pressure observations, the storm is now credibly represented in an improved reanalysis of the event. In some locations this storm produced stronger winds than any event during the modern period (1950–2015) and it is in the top-4 storms for strongest winds anywhere over land in England and Wales. As a result, estimates of risk from severe storms, based on modern period data, may need to be revised. Examining the atmospheric structure of the storm suggests that it is a classic Shapiro–Keyser-type cyclone with “sting-jet” precursors and associated extreme winds at locations and times of known significant damage. Comparison with both independent observations and qualitative information, such as photographs and written accounts, provides additional evidence of the credibility of the atmospheric reconstruction, including sub-daily rainfall variations. Simulations of the storm surge resulting from this storm show a large coastal surge of around 2.5 m, comparing favourably with newly rescued tide gauge observations and adding to our confidence in the reconstruction. Combining historical rescued weather observations with modern reanalysis techniques has allowed us to plausibly reconstruct a severe windstorm and associated storm surge from more than 100 years ago, establishing an invaluable end-to-end tool to improve assessments of risks from extreme weather.
Text
ulysses-storm-paper-nhess-revised-techcorr
- Accepted Manuscript
Text
nhess-23-1465-2023
- Version of Record
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 2 March 2023
Published date: 24 April 2023
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
We thank the observers who took the original weather observations over a century ago, those who collated the data so carefully at the time, and the archivists who have preserved the paper material ever since. We also gratefully acknowledge the thousands of citizen scientist volunteers who gave their spare time to help digitize and recover the weather and tide gauge observations used, and Zooniverse for providing the citizen science platform. We also thank Andy Matthews and Elizabeth Bradshaw for the retrieval of Liverpool and Hilbre tide gauge data. Support for the 20th Century Reanalysis Project version 3 dataset is provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science Biological and Environmental Research (BER), by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Program Office, and by the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. Ed Hawkins was supported by the National Centre for Atmospheric Science. Ed Hawkins and Andrew P. Schurer were supported by the NERC GloSAT project. Philip Brohan was supported by the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme funded by BEIS. Gilbert P. Compo, Laura Slivinski, and Chesley McColl were supported in part by the NOAA cooperative agreement NA22OAR4320151, by the NOAA Climate Program Office and NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory.
Funding Information:
This research has been supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (grant no. NE/S015574/1).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Copernicus GmbH. All rights reserved.
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 477168
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/477168
ISSN: 1684-9981
PURE UUID: 6530d6a5-8894-4b55-9ac0-e5f9e4d6f2e2
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Date deposited: 31 May 2023 16:34
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 01:44
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Contributors
Author:
Ed. Hawkins
Author:
Philip Brohan
Author:
Samantha N. Burgess
Author:
Stephen Burt
Author:
Gilbert P. Compo
Author:
Suzanne L. Gray
Author:
Hans Hersbach
Author:
Kiki Kuijjer
Author:
Oscar Martínez-Alvarado
Author:
Chesley McColl
Author:
Andrew P. Schurer
Author:
Laura Slivinski
Author:
Joanne Williams
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