{"id":497,"date":"2007-12-27T17:12:15","date_gmt":"2007-12-27T22:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/12\/a-barrier-to-understanding\/"},"modified":"2008-01-14T08:37:45","modified_gmt":"2008-01-14T13:37:45","slug":"a-barrier-to-understanding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/12\/a-barrier-to-understanding\/","title":{"rendered":"A barrier to understanding?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

People don’t seem to embrace global measures of temperature rise (~0.2\u00baC\/decade) or sea level rise (> 3mm\/yr) very strongly. They much prefer more iconic signs – The National Park formerly-known-as-Glacier, No-snows of Kilimanjaro, Frost Fairs on the Thames etc. As has been discussed here on many occasions, any single example often has any number of complicating factors, but seen as part of a pattern (Kilimanjaro as an example of the other receding tropical glaciers), they can be useful for making a general point. However, the use of an icon as an example of change runs into difficulty if it is then interpreted to be proof<\/em> of that change. <\/p>\n

With respect to sea level, the Thames Barrier is a concrete example that has been frequently raised.
\n<\/p>\n

The trends in its ‘raising’ have been linked to increasing sea levels and storm surges. But how often is it being raised? why? and does it give us any real insight into sea level rises on a wider basis? Looking into it, I was fortunate to get an exceptionally comprehensive set of data on the closings and reasons for them from Anthony Hammond at the Environment Agency in the UK. The results are interesting, but complicated….<\/p>\n

The background to the Thames barrier is available here<\/a>, but suffice to say it started operating in 1983, and is raised whenever there is a forecast danger of high tides, river flow and storm surges combining to threaten London. It has been raised over 100 times operationally since being constructed.<\/p>\n

Lest you think this isn’t really a problem, I recall a friend’s car being parked near the boathouses in Putney<\/a>. After a particularly high tide (this would have been in 1992 maybe), she returned to the car to find it filled with river water. No amount of cleaning ever got rid of the rather pungent odour. Flooding along the riverwalk in Chiswick<\/a> near where I lived at the time, is frequent. And of course, the city has been flooded many times in the past – most recently in 1953<\/a> when over 300 people died. <\/p>\n

The raw data on the closings (per winter season – the 2007 number is for Mar 2006 to Mar 2007) is seen here:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It is clear there has been a strong upswing in closings over time. The last year alone there were almost 3 times as many closing as during the first 5 years of operation put together. The three-year running mean is possibly a little clearer, showing two definite periods of more frequent closings, 1992 to 1995 and 2002 to the present. <\/p>\n

Is this a sign of increased sea level, increased storminess, increased river flow, or changes in river management policy? As always, local factors in short records are important. Over the two and half decades of barrier operation, understanding of the Thames river hydrology has grown and models are now more accurate than they used to be, allowing for more precision in decisions to raise the barrier. The decisions depend on three main factors, the river flow at Teddington (which is where the first weir is), the forecast high tide and the (more uncertain) accompanying surge. Thus if the river flow is strong, an unexceptional high tide could cause problems, while even an exceptional tide might not if the river is particularly low. In the data, closings are distinguished by whether they are due to tidal issues, or to the combined effect of tides and high river flow (fluvial), but there is not necessarily a clean distinction.<\/p>\n

In the 25 years of operation, global sea levels have risen around 5 cm<\/a>, but it’s not at all clear that such a change would be registered in the very noisy extreme surges. The two peak years for closure (2001 and 2003) had very strong river flows, making the tidal threshold for closure much lower than normal. <\/p>\n

Overall, the tidal height over time associated with a closure decision has actually decreased<\/em> (by about 2cm a year just looking at the tidally driven closures). This hints at a possibly increasingly risk-averse management policy, or it might reflect changes in the river models used for predictions (for instance, if including more detail increased the variance). However, the highest tides do come towards the end of the record – the very highest tides at Southend (above 3.9m) occurred in 1994, 2004 and (the highest at 4.04m) 2007. For tides > 3.7m, there were 12 in the last ten years, compared to only 3 in the first ten years in line with generally increasing sea level. However, tidal records are probably best examined directly<\/a> for these kinds of statistics. The raw data for the barrier closings are available here<\/a> if anyone wants to look into it further.<\/p>\n

This might be a good point to address some confusion that is knocking around. For instance, there is a statement from an official UK govt. (Defra) report<\/a> on whether the closings are a useful indicator of climate change that states:<\/p>\n

\nBecause the Thames River Barrier is now subject to different operating rules, it may be less useful as an indicator. The barrier is now closed to retain water in the Thames River as well as to lessen the risk of flooding. (It was closed on 9 successive tides at the start of 2003.) Thus, the number of closures has increased greatly in recent years. This indicator would only be useful if it were possible to distinguish the number of closures made specifically to lessen flood risk.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My contact at the Environment Agency noted that “I have read the Defra statement that you mentioned; it seems that it is a misunderstanding or simply a poor written account of what the Barrier does. The barrier does not maintain river levels during low tides and it never has.” However, he counsels that “the pattern [of closings] is erratic and the years of operation too short for it to be an indicator of sea level rise”.<\/p>\n

To summarise, Thames Barrier closings tell a complicated story which mix climate information with management issues and are probably too erratic to be particularly meaningful – if you want to say something about global sea level, then look at the integrated picture from satellites<\/a> and tide gauges<\/a>. But it is a good illustration of adaptive measures that are, and will increasingly be, needed to deal with ongoing climate change. <\/p>\n\n<\/div> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People don’t seem to embrace global measures of temperature rise (~0.2\u00baC\/decade) or sea level rise (> 3mm\/yr) very strongly. They much prefer more iconic signs – The National Park formerly-known-as-Glacier, No-snows of Kilimanjaro, Frost Fairs on the Thames etc. As has been discussed here on many occasions, any single example often has any number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-climate-science","7":"category-instrumental-record","8":"category-oceans","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}