Dr Kevin Horsburgh

Projects

Head of the National Tidal and Sea Level Facility

Leader of POL Oceans 2025 WP3.5 "Causes and impacts of extreme events"

Manager of POL's contribution to the Storm Tide Forecasting Service (STFS). Developing operational tide-surge models that provide UK coastal flood warning (in partnership with the Met Office and the Environment Agency)

Flood Risk Management Research Consortium (FRMRC). Data assimilation and artificial intelligence techniques in real time forecasting of coastal flooding (with the University of Bristol; funded by EPSRC/NERC)

Thames Estuary 2100. An analysis of extreme sea levels in the southern North Sea in the year 2100, based on coupled climate-surge models (with the Hadley Centre; funded by the EA)

Coastal flood forecasting (SC050069). Development of real time ensemble surge forecasts, and Monte Carlo simulations of nearshore flood severity (with HR Wallingford and the Met Office; funded by Defra)

TRANSFER. FP6 project on global tsunami monitoring and warning

Research Interests

Numerical modelling of sea level: improved techniques for real time forecasting of storm surges; ensemble forecasts and quantification of uncertainty; data assimilation into surge models using variational methods.

Global and European sea level change and extremes. The application of extreme value statistics to tide gauge data and climate model data. Coupling climate and surge models in future scenarios.

Surge inundation modelling: coupling high-resolution coastal and estuarine models to predict flood plain inundation, morphological change and their consequences.

Publications

Horsburgh, K.J., Wilson, C., Baptie, B.J., Cooper, A., Cresswell, D., Musson, R.M.W., Ottemöller, L., Richardson, S., and Sargeant, S.L. (2007) Impact of a Lisbon-type tsunami on the UK coastline, and the implications for tsunami propagation over broad continental shelves. Accepted for publication in Journal of Geophysical Research.

Randon N., Lawry J., Horsburgh K.J. and Cluckie I. (2007) Fuzzy Bayesian Modelling of Sea-Level along the East Coast of Britain. IEEE Transaction on Fuzzy Systems, in press.

Horsburgh, K.J. and Wilson, C. (2007) Tide-surge interaction and its role in the distribution of surge residuals in the North Sea. Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans, 112, C08003, doi:10.1029/2006JC004033.

Butler, A., Heffernan, J.E., Tawn, J.A., Flather, R.A. and Horsburgh, K.J. (2006) Extreme value analysis of decadal variations in storm surge elevations. Journal of Marine Systems, 67, 189-200.

Kobayashi, S., Simpson, J.H., Fujiwara, T. and Horsburgh, K.J. (2006) Tidal stirring and its impact on water column stability and property distributions in a semi-enclosed shelf sea (Seto Inland Sea, Japan). Continental Shelf Research, 26, 1295-1306.

Uehara, K., J.D. Scourse, K.J. Horsburgh, K. Lambeck and A. Purcell (2006) Tidal evolution of the northwest European shelf seas from the last glacial maximum to the present. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 111, C09025, doi:10.1029/2006JC003531

Horsburgh, K.J. and M. Horritt (2006) The Bristol Channel floods of 1607 - reconstruction and analysis. Weather, Vol. 61, 10, 272-277.

Richardson et al. (2006) Tsunamis - assessing the hazard for the UK and Irish coast. Study commissioned by the Defra Flood Management Division, 90pp, Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), London.

Selection of author's POL publications.