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Articles

1989: Vol. LXVI No. 2

Return Periods of Extreme Sea Levels: The Exceedance Probability Method

Submitted
July 31, 2015
Published
2015-05-14

Abstract

Practical application of the Exceedance Probability Method of Middleton and Thompson (J. Geophys. Res., V ol.91, 1986, pp. 11707-11716) to the estimation of extreme sea levels is considered in detail, for ports where tidal amplitudes dominate surge. Data from Sydney (Australia) are used to illustrate the method. Direct use of the histogram of tidal residuals, instead of fitting a model to it, is discussed, and the limitations are pointed out. Graphical fitting of the sum of two normal distributions to the histogram is also discussed. A method is given for including a trend in mean sea level. A simplified method of checking if tidal amplitudes dominate the surge is given in an appendix.