[Vision2020] Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014: "Coastal flood damage and adaptation costs under 21st century sea-level rise"

[Ted Moffett]

For those who dismiss the significant planet wide magnitude of the costs
and damages of sea level rise from anthropogenic global warming, the
following paper from PNAS might give pause.  Full paper at URL below:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/01/29/1222469111.abstract

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/01/29/1222469111.full.pdf+html
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.
Coastal flood damage and adaptation costs under 21st century sea-level rise
Abstract

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.

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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