Abstract
AbstractStudies of coastal vulnerability due to climate change tend to focus on the consequences of sea level rise, rather than the complex coastal responses resulting from changes to the extreme wave climate. Here we investigate the 2013/2014 winter wave conditions that severely impacted the Atlantic coast of Europe and demonstrate that this winter was the most energetic along most of the Atlantic coast of Europe since at least 1948. Along exposed open‐coast sites, extensive beach and dune erosion occurred due to offshore sediment transport. More sheltered sites experienced less erosion and one of the sites even experienced accretion due to beach rotation induced by alongshore sediment transport. Storm wave conditions such as were encountered during the 2013/2014 winter have the potential to dramatically change the equilibrium state (beach gradient, coastal alignment, and nearshore bar position) of beaches along the Atlantic coast of Europe.
Highlights
Coastlines are vulnerable to the effects of climate change on a global scale due to sea level rise and on a regional scale due to changes in the wave climate, and both these climate change impacts influence coastal flooding and coastal erosion
In this paper we investigate and quantify how unusual the 2013/2014 winter was for the Atlantic coast of Europe in terms of wave conditions and coastal impacts
It is tempting to ascribe the record extreme storm wave conditions that were experienced during the 2013/2014 winter to climate change, since increased storminess of the northeast Atlantic is predicted by most climate change models [Leckebusch and Ulbrich, 2004; Ulbrich et al, 2008; Mizuta, 2012; Zappa et al, 2013]
Summary
Coastlines are vulnerable to the effects of climate change on a global scale due to sea level rise and on a regional scale due to changes in the (storm) wave climate, and both these climate change impacts influence coastal flooding and coastal erosion. A recent study of coastal vulnerability in the Pacific [Barnard et al, 2015] concluded that if projections for an increasing frequency of extreme El Niño and La Niña events over the 21st century are confirmed, populated regions on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean basin could be alternately exposed to extreme coastal erosion and flooding, independent of sea level rise. Climate models further predict increased storminess in the northeast Atlantic due to the eastward extension of the North Atlantic storm track [Leckebusch and Ulbrich, 2004; Ulbrich et al, 2008; Bengtsson et al, 2009], with potential implications for the wave conditions along the Atlantic coast of Europe, including the UK. Analysis of modeled wave data for the Atlantic coast of Europe [Wang and Swail, 2002; Dodet et al, 2010; Bertin et al, 2013] suggests an increasing trend in Hs of up to 0.02 m yrÀ1, and upward trends in storminess measures have been observed since 1871 in many parts of western, central, and northern Europe [Donat et al, 2011]
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