EGS XXV General Assembly, Nice, France, April 2000

OA8. Sea-level and sea-ice in the past, present and in the future:

Event Information

The low-lying coastal areas, especially those of the marginal seas in the moderate latitudes, are exposed to two major types of natural hazards: storm surges and sea-ice. Both occur in the cool season of the year, however flooding by storm surges is a threat mainly in milder winters and blocking by sea-ice occurs when the winter is a severe one. Thus, both are meteorologically and climatologically dependent: storm surges on stormy on-shore winds, severe winters on climatic fluctuations. During past ages the mankind only partly fought against the floods by building flood gates and sea defences in densely populated areas and built used powerful ice-breakers to (free the ice beset ships) cut a free way in the ice. At present tool for combating or preventing the results of the disaster is a possibility of better forecasting and monitoring a possible hazard itself. Development in both short-term meteorological and long-term climatological modelling allows to secure a timely warning against an inevitable hazard and to better prevent the disaster it might bring. Therefore it would be desirable to bring together - on a session like this- the results from recent studies and practices in the subject. The main topics should refer to: * opinions on the availability, and quality usefulness of historical data on ice-winters and storm-surges in the last millennium and on the recorded data, possible time series, opinions on the available data from the XVIII, XIX and the beginning of XX centuries; * series of data allowing for computation of periodicities or trends; * forecasting and research methods recently applied in the studies on winter severity and intensity of storm surges, including floods due to ice-jamming in river estuaries; * mathematical computing models for processing and analysing data from the upgraded ; observational system to come; * models of expected climatic changes, climatological projections and the expected impact of the climatic changes on the severity of winters, on the sea-level and on the frequency and intensity of storm surges.

Preliminary List of Solicited Speakers

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