Projected changes in US coastal floods accounting for sea level rise and local subsidence

Código

I-EBHE0198

Autores

Debora Yumi de Oliveira, Manoochehr Shirzaei, Amir AghaKouchak

Tema

WG 1.10: Hydrologic Design - Solutions & Communication

Resumo

High-resolution projections of future coastal flooding are needed to guide the development of comprehensive adaptation strategies. Previous studies have shown that neglecting the compounding effects of river flow and sea level rise can significantly underestimate flood levels. In addition, local land subsidence may exacerbate the impact of flooding in coastal regions. Sea level projections provided in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report assume a regionally varying constant vertical land motion (VLM) trend extracted from historical tide-gauge data and thus do not account for the influence of spatially variable land subsidence. Here, we estimate projected changes in US coastal floods by accounting for the compounding effects of river floods and location-specific relative sea level (RSL) projections. We replace the existing VLM projections with high-resolution VLM data based on the Virginia Tech Earth Observation and Innovation (EOI) Lab VLM product. We illustrate the potential of underestimating flood levels for multiple US coastal cities and the influence of the uncertainty associated with the sea level projections and VLM rates.