Spatiotemporal Variability in Global Storm Surge and Tidal Water Levels from Satellite Radar Altimetry

Extreme (still) sea levels and the possibly associated coastal floods, are generally linked to (high) tides and storm surges. The risk of coastal floods will likely intensify in the future. This is because, on the one hand, the population of coastal zones is expected to continue to grow, and, on the other hand, climate change may lead to an...

Lead Detection in the Arctic Ocean from Sentinel-3 Satellite Data: A Comprehensive Assessment of Thresholding and Machine Learning Classification Methods

In the Arctic Ocean, obtaining water levels from satellite altimetry is hampered by the presence of sea ice. Hence, water level retrieval requires accurate detection of fractures in the sea ice (leads). This paper describes a thorough assessment of various surface type classification methods, including a thresholding method, nine supervised-,...

Secular Trends in Global Tides Derived From Satellite Radar Altimetry

Previous studies have demonstrated that tides are subject to considerable changes on secular time scales. However, these studies rely on sea level observations from tide gauges that are predominantly located in coastal and shelf regions and therefore, the large-scale patterns remain uncertain. Now, for the first time, satellite radar...

The Influence of Arctic Landfast Ice on Seasonal Modulation of the M₂ Tide

Seasonal modulation of the M₂ tide has been quantified for the entire Arctic Ocean and connected regional seas, using tidal harmonic analysis of water levels derived from Synthetic Aperture Radar altimetry. Results are compared to numerical simulations that model the effect of two limiting cases of seasonal landfast ice cover on...

On the Impact of Salt Marsh Pioneer Species-Assemblages on the Emergence of Intertidal Channel Networks

Tidal marshes play an important role in climate change mitigation through natural coastal protection. The effectiveness of the natural coastal defense by tidal marshes is closely related to their channel network which is in turn greatly influenced by their vegetation cover and shape. Previous research suggests a dual effect of vegetation on...