The data are simulated instantaneous sea surface elevations above time-mean sea level due to tides alone. The data were produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre. The data were produced to investigate the impact of simulated mean sea level increase on UK coastal tides. To produce the data, the CS3 continental shelf model was used to simulate the tides under various different amounts of mean sea level increase (simulated by simply increasing the bathymetry). The data are the resulting simulated sea surface elevations above the mean sea level. The data covers a period of about 28 days (one spring-neap cycle), and applies to the UK coast.

There are several caveats which should be noted when using the ‘UKCP18 Simulated Impact of Mean Sea Level Change on Tidal Characteristics around the UK’ dataset:

1. The spin-up period has been included in the data. It takes about 48 hours to spin up to a realistic tide so users should remove the first 48 hours of data, or conduct their own analysis to assess how much spin-up time to remove, in order to get a realistic representation of the tide.

2. A land-sea mask has not been applied to the data so users should take care to ensure they are only using data from sea locations.

3. There is a rim of zeros around the edge of the data which should be ignored.