Using remarkability to define coastal flooding thresholds

Moore, Frances C.; Obradovich, Nick

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-13935-3

Cited by 57 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Official and inferred NF thresholds can differ by more than 0.1 m, which could increase or decrease the number of additional NF days identified here, and hence is a source of uncertainty. Alternative ways to define NF thresholds include using the concept of remarkability of flood events, which is tied to social media posts ( 9 ), or fixed values above MHHW [e.g., 0.3 m in ( 11 )].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolving tides aggravate nuisance flooding along the U.S. coastline

Wahl

Talke

et al. 2021

Sci. Adv.

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Nuisance flooding (NF) is defined as minor, nondestructive flooding that causes substantial, accumulating socioeconomic impacts to coastal communities. While sea-level rise is the main driver for the observed increase in NF events in the United States, we show here that secular changes in tides also contribute. An analysis of 40 tidal gauge records from U.S. coasts finds that, at 18 locations, NF increased due to tidal amplification, while decreases in tidal range suppressed NF at 11 locations. Estuaries show the largest changes in NF attributable to tide changes, and these can often be traced to anthropogenic alterations. Limited long-term measurements from estuaries suggest that the effects of evolving tides are more widespread than the locations considered here. The total number of NF days caused by tidal changes has increased at an exponential rate since 1950, adding ~27% to the total number of NF events observed in 2019 across locations with tidal amplification.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolving tides aggravate nuisance flooding along the U.S. coastline

Wahl

Talke

et al. 2021

Sci. Adv.

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“…The exceedance of impact‐based thresholds is commonly used as a proxy for the occurrence of historical coastal inundation (e.g., Dahl et al, 2017; Hague et al, 2019; Hanslow et al, 2019; Hino et al, 2019; Moore & Obradovich, 2020; Ray & Foster, 2016; Strauss et al, 2016; Sweet & Park, 2014; Sweet et al, 2018; Thompson et al, 2019). Therefore, estimates of historical coastal inundation days are simply the number of days per year where the daily maximum (hourly) sea level observation is equal to or exceeds the relevant impact‐based threshold.…”

Section: Historical Inundation Frequenciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sea Level Rise Driving Increasingly Predictable Coastal Inundation in Sydney, Australia

et al. 2020

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As global mean sea level continues to rise, thresholds corresponding to coastal inundation impacts are exceeded more frequently. This paper aims to relate sea level rise (SLR) observations and projections to their physical on-the-ground impacts. Using a large coastal city as an example, we show that in Sydney, Australia, frequencies of minor coastal inundation have increased from 1.6 to 7.8 days per year between 1914 and present day. We attribute over 80% of the observed coastal inundation events between 1970 and 2015 to the predominantly anthropogenic increases in global mean sea level. Further, we find that impact-producing coastal inundation will occur weekly by 2050 under high-and medium-emission/SLR scenarios and daily by 2100 under high emissions. The proportion of tide-only coastal inundation events (i.e., where no storm surge is required to exceed flood thresholds) will increase with SLR, such that most coastal inundation events, including those considered historically severe, will become a predictable consequence of SLR and astronomical tides. These findings are important for coastal managers as frequency, severity, and predictability of inundation impacts can all now be related to the amount of SLR (e.g., a planning allowance or SLR projection). By incorporating known historical inundation events, this allows contextualization, visualization, and localization of global SLR and the changing nature of future coastal inundation risk. Plain Language Summary As sea levels rise, the daily highest tide reaches higher and further inland, and as a result, we see coastal flooding more frequently. Coastal flooding is when roads, carparks, walking paths, gardens, and, in more extreme cases, homes and businesses are impacted by high sea levels. Using Sydney, Australia, as an example, we find that most coastal flooding events we observe today would not have happened without human-caused sea level rise. Further, coastal flooding is expected to occur in Sydney on average once per week by 2050 and every day by 2100 if high greenhouse gas emissions continue. In the past, the most severe coastal flooding impacts, such as flooding of main roads and private property, only occurred with large coastal storm events. However, we find that these severe floods will occur much more frequently as sea levels continue to rise, as they will eventually occur on the daily high tides. As the timing and heights of daily high tides are driven by the Sun, Moon, and the seasons, these severe coastal floods will become very predictable. This will have implications for the coastal and emergency managers tasked to deal with this changing risk.

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“…As another future consideration 27,28 , consider temporal variability in the remarkability of extreme weather events, particularly in the context of rapid climate change. There is evidence that climate change can have a significant on wind speed 29 , although it is unlikely to be significant over the course the 20-month time span in this study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A social Beaufort scale to detect high winds using language in social media posts

Weaver

Williams

Arthur

2021

Sci Rep

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People often talk about the weather on social media, using different vocabulary to describe different conditions. Here we combine a large collection of wind-related Twitter posts (tweets) and UK Met Office wind speed observations to explore the relationship between tweet volume, tweet language and wind speeds in the UK. We find that wind speeds are experienced subjectively relative to the local baseline, so that the same absolute wind speed is reported as stronger or weaker depending on the typical weather conditions in the local area. Different linguistic tokens (words and emojis) are associated with different wind speeds. These associations can be used to create a simple text classifier to detect ‘high-wind’ tweets with reasonable accuracy; this can be used to detect high winds in a locality using only a single tweet. We also construct a ‘social Beaufort scale’ to infer wind speeds based only on the language used in tweets. Together with the classifier, this demonstrates that language alone is indicative of weather conditions, independent of tweet volume. However, the number of high-wind tweets shows a strong temporal correlation with local wind speeds, increasing the ability of a combined language-plus-volume system to successfully detect high winds. Our findings complement previous work in social sensing of weather hazards that has focused on the relationship between tweet volume and severity. These results show that impacts of wind and storms are found in how people communicate and use language, a novel dimension in understanding the social impacts of extreme weather.

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Using remarkability to define coastal flooding thresholds

Cited by 57 publications

References 31 publications

Evolving tides aggravate nuisance flooding along the U.S. coastline

Evolving tides aggravate nuisance flooding along the U.S. coastline

Sea Level Rise Driving Increasingly Predictable Coastal Inundation in Sydney, Australia

A social Beaufort scale to detect high winds using language in social media posts

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