  Knowledge about statistics for water level variations along the coast due to
storm surge is important for the utilization of the coastal zone. An open and
freely available storm surge hindcast archive covering the coast of Norway and
adjacent sea areas spanning the time period 1979-2022 is presented. The storm
surge model is forced by wind stress and mean sea level pressure taken from the
non-hydrostatic NORA3 atmospheric hindcast. A dataset consisting of
observations of water level from more than 90 water level gauges along the
coasts of the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea is compiled and quality
controlled, and used to assess the performance of the hindcast. The
observational dataset is distributed in both time and space, and when
considering all the available quality controlled data, the comparison with
modelled water levels yield a mean absolute error (MAE) of 9.7 cm and a root
mean square error (RMSE) of 12.4 cm. Values for MAE and RMSE scaled by the
standard deviation of the observed storm surge for each station are 0.42 and
0.54 standard deviations, repsectively. When considering the geographical
differences in characteristics of storm surge for different countries/regions,
the values of MAE and RMSE are in the range 5.7-13.9 cm and 7.6-17.8 cm
respectively, and 0.33-0.46 and 0.42-0.59 standard deviations for the scaled
values. The minimum and maximum values for water level in the hindcast are
-2.60 m and 3.92 m. In addition, 100-year return level estimates are calculated
from the hindcast, with minimum and maximum values of, respectively, -2.75 m
and 3.98 m. All minimum and maximum values are found in the southern North Sea
area.
