This dataset contains estimations of Arctic sea level anomalies produced by the ESA Sea Level Climate Change Initiative project (Sea_level_cci), based on satellite altimetry from the ENVISAT and SARAL/Altika satellites. It has been produced by Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS) and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML). The retrieval of sea level in the Arctic sea ice covered region requires specific processing steps of the satellite altimetry measurements. For this dataset, a specific radar waveform classification method has been applied based on a neural network approach, and the waveform retracking is based on a new adaptive retracking that is able to process both open ocean and peaky echoes measured in leads without introducing any bias between the two types of surfaces. Editing and mapping processing steps have been optimized for this dataset

The UK national network of sea level gauges was established after violent storms in the North Sea in 1953 resulted in serious flooding in the Thames Estuary. The data are required for research and operational use and to facilitate specific scientific studies of coastal processes such as tidal response, storm surge behaviour and sea level rise; and for underpinning local and national operational systems such as the Storm Tide Forecasting Service at the Met Office. BODC has a special responsibility for the remote monitoring and retrieval of sea level data from the network. Daily checks are kept on the performance of the gauges and the data are downloaded weekly. These are then routinely processed and quality controlled prior to being made available.

The data set comprises time series measurements from offshore pressure gauges mounted on the sea floor. The data holdings are approximately 100 observation months from 30 sites. The data are mainly from trans-ocean sections in the North Atlantic. Data records contain date/time, total pressure (or relative pressure) and, occasionally, temperature. The sampling interval is typically 15 minutes or hourly, over deployment periods ranging from 1 to 6 months. Data were collected mainly by the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL), now the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) at Liverpool, and are managed by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC).

The dataset consists of 2580 tiff images of tide gauge charts from Bowling, River Clyde. The images were taken from annual bound volumes of tide gauge charts (~1 page per week, 52 pages per volume). A typical volume measures 37 x 34 x 3.5 cm and pages are single sided. The ledgers for Bowling begin in 1888 and end in 1952, but under this project, only the charts up until 04/01/1939 were photographed. The trace on the original charts was generated by a float tide gauge. The float inside a stilling-well was connected by a wire run over pulleys to a pen that moved up and down as the tide rose and fell. The images were generated by a commercial scanning organisation (TownsWeb Archiving Ltd) using a planetary overhead book scanner. In July 2016 The Peel Group Ltd. (Glasgow) approached BODC to donate their tidal archive, due to office redevelopment. The archive consists of ledgers of tide gauge charts (345 annual bound volumes) and handwritten ledgers (91 bound books) from several locations along the Clyde, with the earliest record beginning in 1841 from Glasgow Harbour. Later that year BODC received a grant from the Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN) to photograph a selection of the ledgers. MEDIN released these funds to support small Data Archiving Projects that increase access to industry marine data. Ledgers also exist for Broomielaw, Dalmuir, Gourock, Govan Wharf, Greenock, Partick Wharf Glasgow, Queen's Dock Entrance Glasgow and Rothesay Dock. Most begin in the late 19th Century and run to the mid-20th century. It is hoped that these will be digitised in the future, subject to funding.

A set of historical tide gauge sea level records from Santander (Northern Spain) have been recovered from logbooks stored at the Spanish National Geographical Institute (IGN). Sea level measurements have been digitised, quality-controlled and merged into a consistent sea level time series. Vertical references among instruments benchmarks have been derived from high precision vertical levelling surveys. The observations were recorded as daily averages and are from three different instruments in two locations in Santander (Spain). The historical sea level record in Santander consists of a daily time series spanning the period 1876-1924 and it is further connected to the modern tide gauge station nearby, ensuring datum continuity up to the present. The data from Santander comes from a floating gauge and then syphon gauges. This scarcity of long-term sea-level observations, as well as their uneven geographical distribution is a major challenge for climate studies that address, for example, the quantification of mean sea-level rise at centennial time scales, the accurate assessment of sea-level acceleration or the long-term changes in sea-level extremes that are vital for coastal risk assessments. This dataset represents an additional effort of sea-level data archaeology and aims at preserving the historical scientific heritage that has been up to now stored in old archives in non-electronic format. The research was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. A further two series were rescued from Alicante under the same initiative.

This database, and the accompanying website called ‘SurgeWatch’ (http://surgewatch.stg.rlp.io), provides a systematic UK-wide record of high sea level and coastal flood events over the last 100 years (1915-2014). Derived using records from the National Tide Gauge Network, a dataset of exceedence probabilities from the Environment Agency and meteorological fields from the 20th Century Reanalysis, the database captures information of 96 storm events that generated the highest sea levels around the UK since 1915. For each event, the database contains information about: (1) the storm that generated that event; (2) the sea levels recorded around the UK during the event; and (3) the occurrence and severity of coastal flooding as consequence of the event. The data are presented to be easily assessable and understandable to a wide range of interested parties. The database contains 100 files; four CSV files and 96 PDF files. Two CSV files contain the meteorological and sea level data for each of the 96 events. A third file contains the list of the top 20 largest skew surges at each of the 40 study tide gauge site. In the file containing the sea level and skew surge data, the tide gauge sites are numbered 1 to 40. A fourth accompanying CSV file lists, for reference, the site name and location (longitude and latitude). A description of the parameters in each of the four CSV files is given in the table below. There are also 96 separate PDF files containing the event commentaries. For each event these contain a concise narrative of the meteorological and sea level conditions experienced during the event, and a succinct description of the evidence available in support of coastal flooding, with a brief account of the recorded consequences to people and property. In addition, these contain graphical representation of the storm track and mean sea level pressure and wind fields at the time of maximum high water, the return period and skew surge magnitudes at sites around the UK, and a table of the date and time, offset return period, water level, predicted tide and skew surge for each site where the 1 in 5 year threshold was reached or exceeded for each event. A detailed description of how the database was created is given in Haigh et al. (2015). Coastal flooding caused by extreme sea levels can be devastating, with long-lasting and diverse consequences. The UK has a long history of severe coastal flooding. The recent 2013-14 winter in particular, produced a sequence of some of the worst coastal flooding the UK has experienced in the last 100 years. At present 2.5 million properties and £150 billion of assets are potentially exposed to coastal flooding. Yet despite these concerns, there is no formal, national framework in the UK to record flood severity and consequences and thus benefit an understanding of coastal flooding mechanisms and consequences. Without a systematic record of flood events, assessment of coastal flooding around the UK coast is limited. The database was created at the School of Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton with help from the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, the National Oceanography Centre and the British Oceanographic Data Centre. Collation of the database and the development of the website was funded through a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) impact acceleration grant. The database contributes to the objectives of UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) consortium project FLOOD Memory (EP/K013513/1).

Historic sea level data from 6 sites on the South coast of England, recovered as part of a PhD on sea level trends in the English Channel. Devonport: 1961-1986, 1988-1990 Newhaven: 1942-1948, 1950-1951, 1953-1957, 1964-1965, 1973, 1988 Portsmouth: 1961-1990 Southampton: 1935-1979, 1982-1990 St. Marys: 1968-1969, 1973, 1975, 1977-1978, 1987-1989 Weymouth: 1967-1971, 1983-1987 There are raw data files and cleaned data files. The cleaned files have been corrected for datum changes which are recorded in the readme files for each site.

The Mediterranean-Alpine Experiment (MEDALPEX) data set comprises over 200,000 hourly sea level measurements. Data are included from 28 sites around the northern coast of the Mediterranean and one in the Atlantic at Cadiz. Measurements were collected from December 1981 and September 1982, with a special observing period (SOP) between 15 February and 30 April 1982. Twenty eight coastal sites were instrumented with conventional stilling wells, while one offshore site off Corsica used a bottom pressure recorder. The data are stored, together with benchmark information, as time series at each site with hourly values of sea surface elevation recorded to the nearest millimetre. The aim of the MEDALPEX Experiment was to study the role of atmospheric forcing on the dynamics of the Western Mediterranean. Data were supplied by laboratories in Belgium, France, Monaco, Italy, Spain, UK and former Yugoslavia. Responsibility for assembling, quality controlling and analyzing the sea level data collected during MEDALPEX was vested in the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC).

This dataset contains high and low water values manually digitised from historic hand-written tabulated ledgers, from the Port of London Authority (PLA). The dataset contains 463 years of data, from across 15 tide gauge sites along the Thames Estuary (bounding box = -0.3159W, 51.3914N, 1.3797E, 51.8428N), for the period 1911 to 1995. When these historic records are combined with digital records available from the PLA since 1995, the new sea level time-series spans the 109-year period from 1911 to 2019. London is one of the world’s most important coastal cities and is located around the Thames Estuary. Quantifying changes in sea levels in the Thames Estuary over the 20th century and early part of the 21st century is vital to inform future management of flood risk in London. This dataset is of importance for ongoing monitoring of mean sea-level rise, and changes in tidal range and extreme sea levels in the Thames Estuary. The project was led by the Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton and the Environment Agency, with contributions from the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemunde and the National Oceanography Centre. The study contributes to the objectives of UK National Environment Research Council (NERC) project E-Rise: Earliest detection of sea-level rise accelerations to inform lead time to upgrade/replace coastal flood defence infrastructure (NE/P009069/1; I.D.H.).

A set of historical tide gauge sea level records from Alicante (Spanish Mediterranean coast) have been recovered from logbooks stored at the Spanish National Geographical Institute (IGN). Sea level measurements have been digitised, quality-controlled and merged into two consistent sea level time series. Vertical references among instruments benchmarks have been derived from high precision vertical levelling surveys. Earlier observations are daily averages and more recent data are hourly values. The observations are from 7 different tide gauge records in Alicante outer harbour (Alicante I) and five tide gauge series in Alicante inner harbour (Alicante II). The sea level record in Alicante starts in 1870 with daily averaged values until the 1920s and hourly afterwards, and is still in operation, thus representing the longest tide gauge sea level time series in the Mediterranean Sea. The sea level at Alicante I has been measured by tide pole, floating gauge, mechanical recorder, digital recorder and since 2014 by radar gauge. The sea level at Alicante II has been measured by floating gauge, digital recorder and from 2014 onwards by radar gauge. This scarcity of long-term sea-level observations, as well as their uneven geographical distribution is a major challenge for climate studies that address, for example, the quantification of mean sea-level rise at centennial time scales, the accurate assessment of sea-level acceleration or the long-term changes in sea-level extremes that are vital for coastal risk assessments. This dataset represents an additional effort of sea-level data archaeology and aims at preserving the historical scientific heritage that has been up to now stored in old archives in non-electronic format. The research was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. A further series was rescued from Santander under the same initiative.