GEX0020

Written evidence submitted by The National Oceanography Centre

1. The UK’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC) is one of the world’s leading oceanographic institutions with a remit to deliver research from the coast to the deep ocean. An independent research organisation and registered charity, our activities span numerous disciplines, from ocean physics to numerical modelling, marine biology, climate change, marine geophysics and technology innovation. We manage two of the UK’s national fleet of oceanographic research vessels and are home to the Marine Robotics Innovation Centre in Southampton.
2. We are delighted to submit to this inquiry. Although the ocean impacts on all extreme weather, the below particularly focuses on coastal impacts such as flooding.

Executive Summary

3. We would like to see the government focus in these three areas:

• Strategy: it would be helpful for the government to determine a long-term strategy to resilience. As the National Audit Office points out “Government has committed to developing a coordinated approach to investment in resilience, but this approach may not be ready until 2030[1].” There is much positive work to react to weather extremes, but longer-term thinking, and funding, is required as a priority.
• Coastal sea level monitoring: We would like to see an upgrade to Britain’s infrastructure of coastal sea level monitoring stations which provide real-time data warning of storm surges. As detailed below, current gauges provide short term data, but fail to contribute to global efforts to monitor, and thereby predict, longer-term climactic changes.
• Natural Hazards Partnership: This important consortium currently relies on organisations providing time and expertise with very little funding, which is not sustainable and limits what this can do. This must be appropriately resourced as part of a wider, long-term strategy for resilience.

Does the UK Government have a clear vision and well-defined roles and responsibilities to manage national risks?

4. NOC is part of the Natural Hazards Partnership (NHP), a consortium of organisations which provide expertise and advice to government. The NHP has identified coastal hazards, in particular combinations/cascades of hazards, as a significant knowledge and operational gap in comparison with other onshore and atmospheric hazards. The group plays an important role in informing government strategy.
5. It is clear that the NHP is hampered by a lack of funding, with a general acceptance from parties involved that their expertise, and the involvement of their organisation, is often on a voluntary basis. This is not sustainable. NOC receives National and Public Good (NPG) funding, but this only covers a very small part of the work of NOC and NERC-funded centres which contribute significantly to the partnership. Sustained funding is needed to significantly progress the work that it does. We would like to see focused investment in infrastructure, research, data analysis, technology, and to translate existing models and approaches.
6. The model adopted by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) is effective at bringing in expertise following a particular event, and NOC has provided help and advice as required. However, this is ad hoc, rather than strategic, but a useful forum to link experts with policy-makers nonetheless.

What are the risks from extreme weather events?

7. It is clear that the UK, and countries across the globe, will be subjected to more frequent hazardous weather events in the coming years and decades. This includes storm tides, high waves, surges and the increasing frequency of flooding. Frequency, rather than severity, is a greater issue. Indeed, it is often immaterial if a person’s home is impacted by flood water that is knee-deep rather than ankle deep – essentially, the damage is done regardless. More pertinently it would be useful to consider frequency – whether that same home is impacted by flooding once every two years, or once every two decades.
8. Weather events that cause the greatest impact are often combined events, and it is important to determine potential impacts when a number of issues combine. This could include high tides at the same time that rivers have been flooded, meaning there is nowhere for excess water to flow to. High rainfall or wave action are linked not only to flooding but also to landslides, which in turn create other extreme impacts.
9. Extreme weather can have many impacts, including damage to cables (undersea or on land), impacting on communications and electricity supplies, and on transport infrastructure such as railway lines which may flood in the winter and buckle in the summer heat. Different government departments own the risks, and take responsibility for, impacts on different infrastructure. The impacts set out here have fed into the updated Strategy for Maritime Security, which has benefitted users such as the UK’s Telecoms Security and Resilience team within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the International Cable Protection Committee.

What is the Government’s understanding of risks and any gaps in its knowledge?

10. There are current shortcomings in the link between research and policy, some of which are well articulated by the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology[2]. These include the need for more comprehensive scientific scrutiny of the risks, the difficulty in identifying risk owners across government departments, and the need for more bottom-up knowledge transfer as seen in other countries. The lack of integration between the National Risk Assessment, primarily concerned with short-term emergency response to acute risks that could occur in the next few years, and the Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA), looking at longer term changes in climatic impacts, is a concern.
11. Further questions on gaps in understanding are best directed to government itself, in particular through the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). As part of the national capability (national and public good) provision funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), NOC provides impartial scientific advice to government and others based on its unique range of expertise including in response to emergencies where scientific advice and evidence may be needed rapidly[3].
12. The work of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology and its provision of POSTnotes is a valuable resource for parliamentarians, allowing them to scrutinise government policy. These allow for scientific experts to input into accessible briefings which may inform debates within parliament[4].
13. The Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) is the primary independent source of marine climate change impacts evidence and adaptation advice in the UK and an exemplar model for scientific integrity, and stakeholder engagement. It is for government to answer to what extent the work of MCCIP informs the understanding of risk across government departments.
14. The Marine Science Co-ordination Committee (MSCC) previously provided a cross-government body for marine scientists to input into. Dissolved in December 2022, it is unclear how the community will regularly input into cross government work without this conduit to bring expertise into government. 

How the UK Government can develop resilience

15. The UK Tide Gauge Network (UKTGN) was formally created in 1980 and evolved from a collection of existing tide gauges that were operated by different authorities and for a variety of purposes, to the current group of 43 tide gauges. Today, the UKTGN delivers sea level observations in near-real time to the UK Coastal Flood Forecasting (UKCFF) Service, which operates across government agencies and incorporates a suite of tidal, surge and wave forecasting models, alongside the tide gauge observations. In recent years, the UK Tide Gauge Network (UKTGN) has been used primarily for short-term operational forecasting because since 2017 less than half of the UKTGN gauges reported data of sufficient quality to contribute data to the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission’s databank for long-term sea level observations – the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level.
16. For tsunami monitoring, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO’s (IOC/UNESCO) GLOSS Programme now defines minimum standards, and whilst other nations have upgraded their monitoring technology over the last decade, the UKTGN presently falls short of these requirements. In an attempt to improve the UK sea level monitoring capability, in 2021, the National Oceanography Centre raised one-off funding to install three prototype scientific-grade tide gauges at key locations (Newlyn, Sheerness and Liverpool.) These tide gauges have been designed to rigorous GLOSS standards and build upon innovative key technologies already developed at NOC. Most importantly, they can be used for multiple applications including climate change assessments, determining design levels of coastal infrastructure and for operational forecasting including tsunami monitoring.
17. If the sea-level risks to the UK are to be understood fully and mitigated, investment is required to ensure that the UKTGN is suitable for a full range of sea level monitoring and assessment applications and that the interests of all stakeholders are preserved in future. Sea defences are measures aimed at protecting low-lying coast and coastal hinterland against flooding caused by the combined effect of storm surges and high tides, to fix the land-sea boundary or reduce the impact of erosion.  Natural solutions, including restoration of wetlands, are increasingly part of the mix of attempts to mitigate the impact of sea level rise and protect cities from being inundated with flood water.  The majority of the UK’s coastline is managed in order to prevent or minimise coastal erosion. Management strategies often include sea defences, whether hard or soft engineering defences.
18. NOC’s Wirewall project[5] is an example where innovative technology is used to deliver site-specific wave measurements to inform flood risk response plans and investment in coastal defence schemes needed due to sea-level rise.  Fieldwork for this was carried out in Crosby, Liverpool.

19. The announcement by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) of a FLOOD Centre for Doctoral Training[6], providing £2.6 million of funding, is an important first step to providing the necessary future skills the sector needs. Including experts from the universities of Southampton, Bristol, Loughborough and Newcastle, the National Oceanography Centre, UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and British Geological Survey, and an additional 37 partner organisations, the new centre will help the UK become more resilient to flooding. It will help develop a talent pool of environmental experts invested in protecting against rising river, rainfall and sea levels. The centre has the potential to provide skills to secure the UK’s resilience in the coming years and decades. The involvement of the private sector, local authorities and the insurance sector will also bridge gaps that currently exist between the evidence base and flood risk management approaches, policy, regulation and community engagement. The centre also has important buy-in from the flood sector, having been co-designed (and will be co-delivered) with partner organisations.

What is the appropriate pace and scale of adaptation required to fully prepare the UK for climate risks?

20. It is important that the scale of adaptations needs to be national and long-term, including how they are funded. Often hard flood defences have an impact on neighbouring coastlines, which means that any regional focus must take into account wider impacts beyond their own jurisdiction. Public engagement is also crucial for buy-in into adaptations.
21. Expertise within local communities needs to be improved. It is often the case that local authority engineers are called upon to work across sectors, from highways to coastal management. It is clear that coastal management requires specialist skills and capacity to develop long-term solutions. The Environment Agency also faces a skills shortage, and is often focused on rivers rather than coastal areas, partly determined by a lack of resource. The pipeline also needs to be addressed, as many geographers with a STEM background go into human geography, rather than becoming engineers which are required for coastal management. We hope that the FLOOD Centre for Doctoral Training will help develop the next generation of leaders, helping to inform regulation and policy within the area of adaptations.

Conclusion

22. It is clear that there are a number of mechanisms to help tackle resilience when looking at short-term events and the risks associated with them, including the National Risk Assessment and SAGE. What is less certain is how these interact, and inform, longer term thinking within government. The UK’s resilience to extreme weather will grow in importance as the frequency of such events increases. A sustained, long-term focus, coupled with a collaborative and supportive approach, is required to foster a robust approach to resilience.

February 2024