[en] Coastal flood damage and adaptation costs under 21st century sea-level rise are assessed on a global scale taking into account a wide range of uncertainties in continental topography data, population data, protection strategies, socioeconomic development and sea-level rise. Uncertainty in global mean and regional sea level was derived from four different climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5, each combined with three land-ice scenarios based on the published range of contributions from ice sheets and glaciers. Without adaptation, 0.2–4.6% of global population is expected to be flooded annually in 2100 under 25–123 cm of global mean sea-level rise, with expected annual losses of 0.3–9.3% of global gross domestic product. Damages of this magnitude are very unlikely to be tolerated by society and adaptation will be widespread. The global costs of protecting the coast with dikes are significant with annual investment and maintenance costs of US$ 12–71 billion in 2100, but much smaller than the global cost of avoided damages even without accounting for indirect costs of damage to regional production supply. Flood damages by the end of this century are much more sensitive to the applied protection strategy than to variations in climate and socioeconomic scenarios as well as in physical data sources (topography and climate model). Our results emphasize the central role of long-term coastal adaptation strategies. These should also take into account that protecting large parts of the developed coast increases the risk of catastrophic consequences in the case of defense failure.
Disciplines :
Earth sciences & physical geography
Author, co-author :
Hinkel, J.
Lincke, D.
Vafeidis, A. T.
Perrette, M.
Nicholls, R. J.
Tol, R.
Marzeion, B.
Fettweis, Xavier ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de géographie > Topoclimatologie
Ionescu, C.
Levermann, A.
Language :
English
Title :
Coastal flood damage and adaptation costs under 21st century sea-level rise
Publication date :
04 February 2014
Journal title :
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
ISSN :
0027-8424
eISSN :
1091-6490
Publisher :
National Academy of Sciences, Washington, United States - District of Columbia
Significance
Coastal flood damages are expected to increase significantly during the 21st century as sea levels rise and socioeconomic development increases the number of people and value of assets in the coastal floodplain. Estimates of future damages and adaptation costs are essential for supporting efforts to reduce emissions driving sea-level rise as well as for designing strategies to adapt to increasing coastal flood risk. This paper presents such estimates derived by taking into account a wide range of uncertainties in socioeconomic development, sea-level rise, continental topography data, population data, and adaptation strategies.
World Bank (2010) The Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change (EACC): Synthesis Report (The World Bank Group, Washington, DC).
Hoozemans FMJ, Marchand M, Pennekamp HA (1993) Sea Level Rise: A Global Vulnerability Assessment: Vulnerability Assessments for Population and Coastal Wetlands and Rice Production on a Global Scale (Delft Hydraulics and Rijkswaterstaat, Delft, The Netherlands), Revised Ed, p 184.
Nicholls RJ, Hoozemans FMJ, Marchand M (1999) Increasing flood risk and wetland losses due to global sea-level rise: Regional and global analysis. Glob Environ Change 9(1):69-87.
Nicholls RJ (2002) Analysis of global impacts of sea-level rise: A case study of flooding. Phys Chem Earth 27(32-34):1455-1466.
Nicholls RJ (2004) Coastal flooding and wetland loss in the 21st century: Changes under the SRES climate and socio-economic scenarios. Glob Environ Change 14(1):69-86.
Pardaens AK, Lowe JA, Brown S, Nicholls RJ, de Gusmo D (2011) Sea-level rise and impacts projections under a future scenario with large greenhouse gas emission reductions. Geophys Res Lett 38:1-5.
Hinkel J, van Vuuren DP, Nicholls RJ, Klein RJT (2013) The effects of mitigation and adaptation on coastal impacts in the 21st century. Clim Change 117:783794.
Hinkel J, Klein RJT (2009) Integrating knowledge to assess coastal vulnerability to sealevel rise: The development of the DIVA tool. Glob Environ Change 19(3):384-395.
Hastings DA, et al. (1999) Global Land One-kilometer Base Elevation (GLOBE) Digital Elevation Model, Documentation. Key to Geophysical Records Documentation (KGRD) (National Geophysical Data Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO), 1.0 Ed, Vol 10
Rabus B, Eineder M, Roth A, Bamler R (2003) The shuttle radar topography mission: a new class of digital elevation models acquired by spaceborne radar. ISPRS J Photogramm Remote Sens 57(4):241-262.
Center for International Earth Science Information Network, International Food Policy Research Institute, The World Bank, Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (2011) Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project, Version 1 (GRUMPv1): Population Density Grid, (Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, Columbia Univ, Palisades, NY). Available at http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/ data/dataset/grump-v1-population-density.
LandScan (2006) High Resolution Global Population Data Set (UT-Battelle, LLC, Oak Ridge, TN).
Fankhauser S (1995) Protection versus retreat: The economic costs of sea-level rise. Environ Plan A 27(2):299-319.
Yohe G, Neumann J, Marshall P, Ameden H (1996) The economic cost of greenhouseinduced sea-level rise for developed property in the United States. Clim Change 32(4): 387-410.
Taylor KE, Stouffer RJ, Meehl GA (2012) An overview of CMIP5 and the experiment design. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 93:485-498.
Marzeion B, Jarosch AH, Hofer M (2012) Past and future sea-level change from the surface mass balance of glaciers. The Cryosphere 6:1295-1322.
Fettweis X, et al. (2012) Estimating Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance contribution to future sea level rise using the regional atmospheric climate model MAR. The Cryosphere Discussions 6:3101-3147.
Levermann A, et al. (2013) Projecting Antarctic ice discharge using response functions from SeaRISE ice-sheet models. Earth System Dynamics Discussions 4:1117-1168.
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (2012) Shared Socioeconomic Pathways Database. Available at https://secure.iiasa.ac.at/web- apps/ene/SspDb.
Lichter M, Vafeidis AT, Nicholls RJ, Kaiser G (2010) Exploring data-related uncertainties in analyses of land area and population in the "Low-Elevation Coastal Zone"(LECZ). J Coast Res 27(4):757-768.
Church JA, et al. (2013) Climate Change 2013: The Physical Scienence Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge Univ Press, Cambridge, UK).
Farrell WE, Clark JA (1976) On postglacial sea level. Geophys J R Astron Soc 46(3): 647-667.
Levermann A, Griesel A, Hofmann M, Montoya M, Rahmstorf S (2005) Dynamic sea level changes following changes in the thermohaline circulation. Clim Dyn 24: 347-354.
Perrette M, Landerer F, Riva R, Frieler K, Meinshausen M (2013) A scaling approach to project regional sea level rise and its uncertainties. Earth System Dynamics 4(1):11-29.
Jevrejeva S, Moore J, Grinsted A (2012) Sea level projections to ad2500 with a new generation of climate change scenarios. Global Planet Change 80-81:14-20.
Römer H, et al. (2012) Potential of remote sensing techniques for tsunami hazard and vulnerability analysis a case study from Phang-Nga province, Thailand. Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci 12(6):2103-2126.
Seto KC (2011) Exploring the dynamics of migration to mega-delta cities in asia and africa: Contemporary drivers and future scenarios. Glob Environ Change 21(Suppl 1): S94-S107.
Black R, Bennett SR, Thomas SM, Beddington JR (2011) Climate change: Migration as adaptation. Nature 478(7370):447-449.
Wada Y, et al. (2012) Past and future contribution of global groundwater depletion to sea-level rise. Geophys Res Lett 39(16):16.
Ericson JP, Vörösmarty CJ, Dingman SL, Ward LG, Meybeck M (2006) Effective sealevel rise and deltas: Causes of change and human dimension implications. Global Planet Change 50:63-82.
Syvitski JPM, et al. (2009) Sinking deltas due to human activities. Nat Geosci 2: 681-686.
Peltier WR (2000) Sea-Level Rise. History and Consequences, eds Douglas BC, Kearney MS, Leatherman SP (Academic, San Diego), pp 65-95.
Hanson S, et al. (2011) A global ranking of port cities with high exposure to climate extremes. Clim Change 104(1):89-111.
Hallegatte S, Hourcade JC, Dumas P (2007) Why economic dynamics matter in assessing climate change damages: Illustration on extreme events. Ecol Econ 62(2): 330-340.
Nicholls RJ, Tol RSJ (2006) Impacts and responses to sea-level rise: A global analysis of the SRES scenarios over the twenty-first century. Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci 364(1841):1073-1095.
New M, Lister D, Hulme M, Makin I (2002) A high-resolution data set of surface climate over global land areas. Clim Res 21:1-25.
Goelzer H, et al. (2012) Millennial total sea-level commitments projected with the Earth system model of intermediate complexity LOVECLIM. Environ Res Lett 7(4): 045401.
Winkelmann R, Levermann A, Martin MA, Frieler K (2012) Increased future ice discharge from Antarctica owing to higher snowfall. Nature 492(7428):239-242.
Bamber J, Riva R (2010) The sea level fingerprint of recent ice mass fluxes. The Cryosphere 4(4):621-627.
Vafeidis AT, et al. (2008) A new global coastal database for impact and vulnerability analysis to sea-level rise. J Coast Res 24(2):917-924.
Environmental Systems Research Institute. (2002) Digital Chart of the World (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, CA).
Hallegatte S, Green C, Nicholls RJ, Corfee-Morlot J (2013) Future flood losses in major coastal cities. Nature Climate Change 3(9):802-806.
Messner F, et al. (2007) Evaluating flood damages: Guidance and recommendations on principles and methodsFLOODsite Project Deliverable D9.1. Available at http://www.floodsite.net/html/partner-area/project-docs/T09-06-01- Flood-damage-guidelines-d9-1-v2-2-p44.pdf. Accessed January 6, 2014.
Menendez M, Woodworth PL (2011) Changes in extreme high water levels based on a quasi-global tide-gauge dataset. J Geophys Res 115(C10):1-15.
Yohe G, Tol RSJ (2002) Indicators for social and economic coping capacity: Moving toward a working definition of adaptive capacity. Glob Environ Change 12(1):25-40.