Boyden, Patrick, Casella, Elisa, Daly, Christopher and Rovere, Alessio (2021) Hurricane Matthew in 2100: effects of extreme sea level rise scenarios on a highly valued coastal area (Palm Beach, FL, USA). Geo-Marine Letters, 41 (4). DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-021-00715-6.

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Abstract

Sea-level rise represents a severe hazard for populations living within low-elevation coastal zones and is already largelyaffecting coastal communities worldwide. As sea level continues to rise following unabated greenhouse gas emissions,the exposure of coastal communities to inundation and erosion will increase exponentially. These impacts will be furthermagnified under extreme storm conditions. In this paper, we focus on one of the most valuable coastal real estate marketsglobally (Palm Beach, FL). We use XBeach, an open-source hydro and morphodynamic model, to assess the impact of amajor tropical cyclone (Hurricane Matthew, 2016) under three different sea-level scenarios. The first scenario (modern sealevel) serves as a baseline against which other model runs are evaluated. The other two runs use different 2100 sea-levelprojections, localized to the study site: (i) IPCC RCP 8.5 (0.83 m by 2100) and (ii) same as (i), but including enhancedAntarctic ice loss (1.62 m by 2100). Our results show that the effective doubling of future sea level under heightenedAntarctic ice loss amplifies flow velocity and wave height, leading to a 46% increase in eroded beach volume and theovertopping of coastal protection structures. This further exacerbates the vulnerability of coastal properties on the island,leading to significant increases in parcel inundation.

Document Type:	Article
Programme Area:	PA2
Research affiliation:	Integrated Modelling > Data Science and Technology
Refereed:	Yes
Open Access Journal?:	No
DOI:	https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-021-00715-6
ISSN:	0276-0460
Date Deposited:	15 Oct 2021 14:20
Last Modified:	24 Nov 2021 12:51
URI:	http://cris.leibniz-zmt.de/id/eprint/4745

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