Abstract
The expression of storm events in the geological record is poorly understood; therefore, stratigraphic investigations of known events are needed. The 1953 North Sea storm surge was the largest natural disaster for countries bordering the southern North Sea during the twentieth century. We characterize the spatial distribution of a sand deposit from the 1953 storm surge in a salt marsh at Holkham, Norfolk (UK). Radionuclide measurements, core scanning X-ray fluorescence (Itrax), and particle size analyses, were used to date and characterise the deposit. The deposit occurs at the onset of detectable 137Cs - coeval with the first testing of nuclear weapons in the early 1950s. The sand layer is derived from material eroded from beach and dunes on the seaward side of the salt marsh. After the depositional event, accumulation of finer-grained silt and clay materials resumed. This work has important implications for understanding the responses of salt marshes to powerful storms and provides a near-modern analogue of storm surge events for calibration of extreme wave events in the geological record.
Highlights
Sea-level rise will be a significant future environmental hazard, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projecting that global mean sea level will rise 0.26–0.98 m above present by 2100 (Church et al, 2013)
The stratigraphy of the Holkham salt marsh is characterised by clays and silts with organics and occasional sand which is typical of salt marsh environments (Fig. 3)
There is a significant relationship between thickness of the thin sand unit and elevation (r = 0.55, p < 0.05), illustrating that the thicker units are in the higher southern parts of the marsh
Summary
Sea-level rise will be a significant future environmental hazard, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projecting that global mean sea level will rise 0.26–0.98 m above present by 2100 (Church et al, 2013). The greatest social and economic impacts are when moderate and extreme storms result in coastal flooding, which will increase in frequency with higher sea-levels (Nicholls et al, 2007; Church et al, 2013; Haigh et al, 2016). There have been recent efforts to increase our understanding of the spatial and temporal clustering of extreme sea-level events, which has implications for the management and repair of flood-defence systems (Haigh et al, 2016). This endeavour requires a comprehensive dataset of extreme events in which to investigate spatial and temporal trends and provide information on coastal resilience and geomorphic response. Eight events are ranked as severe and one as disastrous, the latter being the storm surge of 1953
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