Marine Projections
UKCP18 provides new projections of time mean sea-level rise and extreme water levels for the UK coastline.
Method and advances since UKCP09
The UKCP18 global mean sea-level rise estimates follow the IPCC 5th assessment approach for contributions from thermal expansion, glaciers and small ice caps, land storage and some of the ice-sheet contributions.
Storm surges are simulated using a surge model that has a long history of use in short term operational forecasting for the UK. The approach to simulation of surges is similar to that used in UKCP09 except the source of the driving data is different. In both UKCP09 and UKCP18, surge information is extracted by running the surge model with both meteorological forcing and tidal forcing together, then with tidal forcing only. The surge information is calculated from the differences between the simulations. In UKCP18, this process has been repeated with different amounts of time-mean sea-level rise added, as this can alter tides and surges.
Further information
Further supporting information can be found in Guidance and Science Reports and include:
- The factsheet on sea level rise and storm surge [886KB] that summarises the key messages, caveats and limitations as well as comparisons with observations.
- A summary of the results, methods, evaluation and limitations of the marine projections in the UKCP18 Science Overview report.
- Detailed description of the methodology and scientific results in the UKCP18 Marine Projections report [5MB].
The full dataset is available from the UKCP18 User Interface and CEDA Data Catalogue (note that this requires familiarity with handling large datasets).