Future Wave Conditions of Europe, in Response to High‐End Climate Change Scenarios

Bricheno, Lucy; Wolf, Judith

doi:10.1029/2018jc013866

Cited by 78 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…Thus, although we project a decrease in mean offshore SWH at all sites, this may be less relevant inshore as the increased MSL will oppose this change, by reducing the effect of coastal depth-limited breaking. This is discussed further by Bricheno and Wolf (2018). They note that this caveat may be more important for changes in the extreme waves (which are not discussed here).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Biases are seen in the results when driven with climate model data, but the spatial pattern of these biases is not correlated with the spatial pattern in the signal of change, and the EC-EARTH simulation gives a realistic spatial pattern of extreme waves for the historical period. Further details and further results are reported in Bricheno and Wolf (2018) and Palmer et al (2018).…”

Section: Wavesmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…Our projection of a decrease in mean SWH agrees with the results of Aarnes et al (2017), who also note a smaller reduction in higher percentiles of SWH, suggesting an increase in the variance. Bricheno and Wolf (2018) discuss an alternative metric of wave changes, based on the mean of twenty annual maxima in SWH at the beginning and end of the 21st century. At some locations the projected change in that metric is positive (increasing) and comparable to the projected MSL change.…”

Section: Wavesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Contributions to 21st century projections of extreme sea-level change around the UK

Howard

Palmer

Bricheno

2019

Environ. Res. Commun.

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We provide a synthesis of results of a recent government-funded initiative to make projections of 21st century change in extreme sea levels around the coast of the United Kingdom. We compare four factors that influence future coastal flood risk: (i) time-mean sea-level (MSL) rise; (ii) changes in storm surge activity; (iii) changes in the offshore wave climate; (iv) changes in tidal amplitude arising from the increase in MSL. Our projections are dominated by the effects of MSL rise, which is typically more than five times larger than any of the other contributions. MSL is projected to rise by about 53 to 115centimetres at the mouth of the Thames and 30 to 90centimetres at Edinburgh (5th to 95th percentiles at 2100 relative to 1981-2000 average). Surge model projections disagree on the sign of future changes. Typical simulated changes are around +/−7centimetres. Because of the disagreement, our best estimate is of no change from this contribution, although we cannot rule out changes of either sign. Wave model projections suggest a decrease in significant wave height of the order of 7centimetres over the 21st century. However, the limited sample size and uncertainty in projections of changes in atmospheric circulation means that we cannot be confident about the sign of future changes in wave climate. MSL rise may induce changes in tidal amplitude of more than 15centimetres over the 21st century for the Bristol Channel. However, models disagree on the sign of change there. Elsewhere, our projected tidal amplitude changes are mostly less than 7centimetres. Whilst changes in MSL dominate, we have shown the potential for all processes considered here to make nonnegligible contributions over the 21st century.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Wavesmentioning

confidence: 77%

Section: Wavesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Contributions to 21st century projections of extreme sea-level change around the UK

Howard

Palmer

Bricheno

2019

Environ. Res. Commun.

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“…events, which have occurred in the Caribbean Sea, have been extracted from the IBTrACS (International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship) database (Knapp et al, 2010a). This period was selected in order to provide a 30-year present-day climatology , to complement that extracted from the 37-year (1979-2015) global wave model runs from Bricheno and Wolf (2018). This period has been extended to include the disastrous hurricane season of 2017, which saw 12 North Atlantic hurricanes, 5 of which had some presence in the Caribbean Sea along with Tropical Storm Bret which impacted 100…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying processes contributing to coastal hazards to inform coastal climate resilience assessments, demonstrated for the Caribbean Sea

Jevrejeva¹,

Bricheno²,

Brown³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Abstract. Scientific evidence is critical to underpin the decisions associated with shoreline management, to build climate resilient communities and infrastructure. We explore the role of waves, storm surges and sea level rise for the Caribbean region with a focus on coastal impacts in the eastern Caribbean islands. We simulate past extreme events and a worst-case scenario, modelling the storm surges and waves, suggesting a storm surge might reach 1.5 m, depending on the underwater topography. Coastal wave heights up to 12 m offshore and up to 5 m near the coast of St Vincent are simulated with a regional wave model. We deliver probabilistic sea level projections for 2100, with a low probability/high impact estimate of possible sea level rise up to 2.2 m, exceeding the 1.8 m global estimate for the same scenario. We introduce a Combined Vulnerability Index, which allows a quantitative assessment of relative risk across the region, showing that sea level rise is the most important risk factor everywhere, but wave impacts are important on windward coasts, increasing to the north, towards the main hurricane track. Our work provides quantitative evidence for policy makers, scientists, and local communities to actively prepare for and protect against climate change.

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“…Additional limitations of our analysis include: (i) the fact that local vertical ground motion (beside GIA) are not accounted for, (ii) the non-consideration of nearshore slope uncertainties and potential beach slope changes in the future (e.g., through notably to changes in the wave climate [103,104]), (iii) the consideration of beaches only, while other systems (e.g., wetlands) are also vulnerable to sea-level rise, (iv) the fact that we do not assess shoreline changes induced by the permanent inundation of low-lying areas (which however will in practice very much depend on adaptation practices), or (v) the assumption that erosion can continue indefinitely rather than be limited by geological constraints. Regarding the latter point, nonetheless, a qualitative estimate of the geological constraint on the erodibility is provided in the coastline geology layer of the EUROSION database.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Likely and High-End Impacts of Regional Sea-Level Rise on the Shoreline Change of European Sandy Coasts Under a High Greenhouse Gas Emissions Scenario

Thiéblemont

Cozannet

Toimil

et al. 2019

Water

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Sea-level rise (SLR) is a major concern for coastal hazards such as flooding and erosion in the decades to come. Lately, the value of high-end sea-level scenarios (HESs) to inform stakeholders with low-uncertainty tolerance has been increasingly recognized. Here, we provide high-end projections of SLR-induced sandy shoreline retreats for Europe by the end of the 21st century based on the conservative Bruun rule. Our HESs rely on the upper bound of the RCP8.5 scenario "likely-range" and on high-end estimates of the different components of sea-level projections provided in recent literature. For both HESs, SLR is projected to be higher than 1 m by 2100 for most European coasts. For the strongest HES, the maximum coastal sea-level change of 1.9 m is projected in the North Sea and Mediterranean areas. This translates into a median pan-European coastline retreat of 140 m for the moderate HES and into more than 200 m for the strongest HES. The magnitude and regional distribution of SLR-induced shoreline change projections, however, utterly depend on the local nearshore slope characteristics and the regional distribution of sea-level changes. For some countries, especially in Northern Europe, the impacts of high-end sea-level scenarios are disproportionally high compared to those of likely scenarios.2 of 22 gas emissions. Since the release of the IPCC AR5 (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report) in 2013, the debate on long-term projections of GMSL has strongly focused on the potentially very large contribution of the Antarctica ice-sheet [2,[8][9][10][11], which constitutes a deep source of uncertainty.Sea-level changes at the regional scale can substantially differ from GMSL change. Thermal expansion is modulated regionally by changes in ocean circulation, density, and atmospheric pressure [12,13]. In addition, water mass transfer from land to the ocean-due, e.g., to mountain glaciers and ice-sheets melting or groundwater extraction-induces regional changes by altering the Earth's gravity field, Earth rotation, and solid-Earth deformation [14]. Ongoing changes in the solid Earth are also still caused by the viscous adjustment of the mantle to the important mass redistribution that followed the Last Glacial Maximum (named Glacial Isostatic Adjustment; GIA) [15]. At the European scale, the influence of GIA is particularly prominent in the Scandinavian area. Finally, at a local scale, high-resolution oceanic processes [16] and vertical ground motion [17,18] can affect further the relative sea-level.Projections of future regional sea-level are crucial to support adaptation planning. So far, coastal adaptation practitioners have often relied on IPCC sea-level projections, which are provided in the form of a likely range (probability larger than 66%), and do not reflect the whole range of uncertainties of sea-level projections [19][20][21][22][23]. However, as coastal climate services are being developed [24,25], it is increasingly recognized that different types of sea-level projections are requir...

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Future Wave Conditions of Europe, in Response to High‐End Climate Change Scenarios

Cited by 78 publications

References 75 publications

Contributions to 21st century projections of extreme sea-level change around the UK

Contributions to 21st century projections of extreme sea-level change around the UK

Quantifying processes contributing to coastal hazards to inform coastal climate resilience assessments, demonstrated for the Caribbean Sea

Likely and High-End Impacts of Regional Sea-Level Rise on the Shoreline Change of European Sandy Coasts Under a High Greenhouse Gas Emissions Scenario

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