Abstract
Global warming is expected to drive increasing extreme sea levels (ESLs) and flood risk along the world’s coastlines. In this work we present probabilistic projections of ESLs for the present century taking into consideration changes in mean sea level, tides, wind-waves, and storm surges. Between the year 2000 and 2100 we project a very likely increase of the global average 100-year ESL of 34–76 cm under a moderate-emission-mitigation-policy scenario and of 58–172 cm under a business as usual scenario. Rising ESLs are mostly driven by thermal expansion, followed by contributions from ice mass-loss from glaciers, and ice-sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Under these scenarios ESL rise would render a large part of the tropics exposed annually to the present-day 100-year event from 2050. By the end of this century this applies to most coastlines around the world, implying unprecedented flood risk levels unless timely adaptation measures are taken.
Highlights
Global warming is expected to drive increasing extreme sea levels (ESLs) and flood risk along the world’s coastlines
All ESL components come as probability density functions (PDFs) that express the different sources of uncertainty and that are combined through Monte Carlo simulations in order to generate probabilistic projections of ESLs (Fig. 1)
As a metric to understanding potential impacts we focus on changes in the magnitude and frequency of occurrence of the present 100-year ESL, ESL100
Summary
Global warming is expected to drive increasing extreme sea levels (ESLs) and flood risk along the world’s coastlines. In this work we present probabilistic projections of ESLs for the present century taking into consideration changes in mean sea level, tides, wind-waves, and storm surges. Recent findings show that global warming will induce changes in storm surges[7,9] and wind-waves[10,11], while cyclonic activity may be affected[8,12]. These climate extremes, along with sealevel rise (SLR) will affect ESL and intensify coastal flood risk[1,2,13,14]. We provide insights on the relative contributions of the different ESL components and their uncertainties
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