The Archbishop of Canterbury said that last week’s North Sea storm surge was a result of global warming. But another East Coast storm surge in 1953 was described by the Archbishop of Canterbury then as an “act of God”. Roy Stevens, from Colchester, asks which archbishop to believe (letter, November 11).

Both were correct. Through history, storm surges have swept the North Sea when storms track across Scotland with fierce northwesterly winds that funnel waters down the body of water. Add on the effects of a high tide, and the sea rises even higher. Surges also grow worse because Britain is tilting down in the South and rising in the North, a legacy of the huge icesheets that melted in the northern half of the country some 10,000 years ago.

Now there are fears that climate change will raise storm surges farther. Melting glaciers and warmer waters are raising sea levels and climate scientists say storm surges may become more frequent. “Floods that occur once in 100 years on the East Coast today may happen once every ten years by the end of the century,” says Jason Lowe at the Met Office Hadley Centre. In the future the height of coastal floods is also likely to increase, potentially causing far more damage.