Abstract: Numerical studies project rising sea levels will cause large increases in the future frequency and duration of coastal wave overtopping hazard. However, many coastal location with an aging vertical sea wall structure already experience hazardous wave overtopping on windy spring tides. Building coastal climate resilience requires accurate wave overtopping prediction tools and near real-time information to prepare for and respond to coastal hazards. In Dawlish, SW England, a new monitoring system to measure concurrent wave overtopping, wind and beach level conditions over a 1-year period was installed by the National Oceanography Centre and the University of Plymouth. The system obtains in-situ measurements of the inland wave overtopping distribution across a public walkway and railway line, and issues near real-time overtopping data, making it accessible online within 15 minutes of detection. This public web service also ingests operational wave and water level data from existing national coastal monitoring networks, providing a full dataset to explore the distribution of overtopping impact relative to the nearshore driving conditions.

Short Bio: Dr. Jennifer Brown is a coastal oceanographer in the Marine Physics and Ocean Climate (MOPC) group at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC). Her research focuses on how changing conditions, in the natural and built environment, may impact peoples’ lives and livelihoods in coastal regions. Her expertise lies in shelf sea and coastal area modelling where she looks at coastal storm impacts, estuary dynamics, air-sea interactions and coastal resilience amongst other topics.