In many coastal communities, the risks driven by storm surges are motivating substantial investments in flood risk management. The design of adaptive risk management strategies, however, hinges on the ability to detect future changes in storm surge statistics. Previous studies have used observations to identify changes in past storm surge statistics. Here, we focus on the simple and decision-relevant question: How fast can we learn from past and potential future storm surge observations about changes in future statistics?

An unseen measurement bias has been identified in global records of sea surface temperature. The discrepancy will need correction, but will not affect conclusions about an overall warming trend.