This data set contains a time series of wind surge values (skew surge) for the Cuxhaven tide gauge for the years 1959 to 2022. The skew surge is the difference between the high water heights or low water heights from observations and tide calculations, respectively. The maximum and minimum heights are used for both the observations and the tides - regardless of the time of occurrence in the respective tide.

The observations used were verified water level data from the Waterways and Shipping Office Elbe-Nordsee (Cuxhaven), as archived yearly at the tidal information service of the Federal Maritime and Hygrographic Agency (BSH). This data is available from the Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration.

A consistent tidal calculation was carried out for the period under consideration, which is based on the current calculation scheme for official tidal predictions. The calculation method is the “Harmonic representation of inequalities”, as described in Boesch & Müller-Navarra (2019) ( https://doi.org/10.5194/os-15-1363-2019 ). The predictions for one year are based on a tidal analysis of the 19 years of water level observations ending three years before the year of the prediction. The prediction for 1959, for example, is based on the results of the tidal analysis of the observations from 1938 to 1956.

These tide calculations differ from the historical predictions as published in the tide tables. Therefore, this data set cannot be used to reproduce official statistics on historical surge values.

In the period under consideration from 1959 to 2022, there were 45169 high water and 45168 low water, based on the assumption of semi-diurnal tides. No skew surge could be calculated for 7 high water and 11 low water, as either observational data was missing or the observational data could not be clearly assigned to the tidal data.

This data set was originally generated for the development of a wind-based storm surge model for the German Bight, which is described in Schaffer et al. (2025) (submitted).