Changing Coastal Weather and Extremes.pdf

Changing Coastal Weather and Extremes Hans von Storch, Frauke Feser, Arnt Pfizenmayer and Ralf Weisse Institute for Coastal Research, Max-Planck-Str. 1, 21502 Geesthacht, Germany 1. Introduction Hardly any area in the whole world is undergoing such dynamical environmental and social change as the coastal regions of the world. Approximately 20% of the world’s human population live within 30 km of the sea, and nearly double that number live within the nearest 100 km of the coast (IPCC 2001). Furthermore, a big part of economic activities is going on in these areas. In the coastal environment storms, storm surges, extreme waves, sea level rise as well as hinterland flooding put the safety of the coastal population at risk and threaten shoreline and off-shore activities. Thus, coastal research will play an increasingly relevant role in advising the society and economy in avoiding unnecessary risks. Special emphasis has to be put on upcoming challenges related to expected anthropogenic climate change. Natural variability, in particular with respect to weather-related extremes, like storm surges, extreme waves and hinterland flooding, needs to be determined by reconstructing and analyzing the historical weather records. Regionally disaggregated scenarios for plausible future developments need to be derived from global climate change scenarios. Figure 1. IPCC assessment of global mean sea level change in the past 100 years (1910-1990) This talk exemplifies ways to constructively address the problem of detailed reconstruction of past coastal extremes and scenarios of future characteristics of extremes. Examples for the case of the North Sea coast in Europe are given. 2. The IPCC analysis and scenarios Figure 2. IPCC assessment of plausible but not necessarily likely future developments of global mean sea level. The bars on the right side represent variations in different scenarios without the effect of storage on ice s