Assessment of long-term impact of storm surges around the Korean Peninsula based on a large ensemble of climate projections

Abstract

This study assesses the long-term impact of storm surges due to typhoons around the Korean Peninsula (KP) resulting from climate change. Long-term projection is conducted based on the large ensemble experiments on so-called d4PDF for the past and +4 K future climate conditions over 5000 years by a single atmospheric global climate model developed by the Meteorological Research Institute of Japan. The use of a large ensemble is to enable one to obtain probabilistic future changes in low-frequency of extreme storm surge events. The properties of typhoons which may directly and indirectly have an effect on the KP in terms of past and future climate conditions is extracted from d4PDF. These are employed as the driving force in the projection of future storm surges around the KP. The storm surge heights (SSH) around the KP are projected to increase in the future climate except for around some areas in the south coast. The magnitude of future change of SSH varies spatially. The maximum variation was estimated to be 0.36 m (9.9%) with a 100-year return period in the west area of the southeastern coast of the KP. The locations of the areas vulnerable to storm surge shift to the north area of the western region and to the west area of the southern regions in the Korean Peninsula under the future climate. The characteristic of future change to areas where high SSHs will occur coincides with that of the typhoon tracks.