East Anglia's crumbling coastline: are offshore breakwaters the answer?

During the storm surge of the 31 January and 1 February 1953 more than 300 people in eastern England lost their lives. At Sea Palling in Norfolk, the surge breached the sand dunes and resulted in the death of seven people. Similar events of catastrophic tidal flooding have been recorded since medieval times and numerous coastal villages have been lost to the sea. Storm surges have played an important role in the evolution of the East Anglian coastline throughout the historical period, and large-scale morphological changes can be caused by a single storm. In north Norfolk, for example, over a threeyear period more than 50 per cent of the net cliff erosion was observed to have occurred during a singlg storm surge.