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10 - Assessing impacts and responses to global-mean sea-level rise

from Part II - Impacts and adaptation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2010

By
Robert J. Nicholls ,
Richard S. J. Tol  and
Jim W. Hall
Edited by
Michael E. Schlesinger ,
Haroon S. Kheshgi ,
Joel Smith ,
Francisco C. de la Chesnaye ,
John M. Reilly ,
Tom Wilson  and
Charles Kolstad
Robert J. Nicholls
Affiliation:
School of Civil Engineering and the Environment University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
Richard S. J. Tol
Affiliation:
Hamburg University ZMK, Bundesstrasse 55, 20146 Hamburg
Jim W. Hall
Affiliation:
School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne Newcastle, NE1 7RU, UK
Michael E. Schlesinger
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Haroon S. Kheshgi
Affiliation:
ExxonMobil Research and Engineering
Joel Smith
Affiliation:
Stratus Consulting Ltd, Boulder
Francisco C. de la Chesnaye
Affiliation:
US Environmental Protection Agency
John M. Reilly
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tom Wilson
Affiliation:
Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto
Charles Kolstad
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Summary

Introduction

One of the more certain impacts of human-induced climate change is a rise in global-mean sea level (Nicholls and Lowe, 2004). While the impacts of this sea-level rise are confined to coastal areas, these include the most densely populated land areas on Earth and they support important and productive ecosystems that are sensitive to sea-level change. Further, coasts are also experiencing significant human-induced modification, so sea-level rise and climate change are an additional stress, which amplifies their impacts (Bijlsma, 1996; Kremer et al., 2005).

During the twenty-first century, global-mean sea-level rise will likely be less than 1 metre (Church and Gregory, 2001), but still potentially directly affecting at least 200 million people based on 1990 population (Hoozemans et al., 1993; Mimura, 2000). Over the longer term (many centuries), a much larger sea-level rise exceeding 10 m is possible under some emission pathways owing to ablation of the Greenland Ice Sheet and collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, among other changes (Oppenheimer and Alley, 2004; Nicholls and Lowe, 2005). Further, the high human exposure to sea-level rise is increasing rapidly because of global population growth and coastward migration. Therefore, any global assessment of the climate change issue must include the coastal implications.

A fundamental result that has long been recognized by climate scientists, but less considered by policy, is that irrespective of future greenhouse gas emissions, there is a “commitment to sea-level rise” (Nicholls and Lowe, 2004; 2005).

Type
Chapter
Information
Human-Induced Climate Change
An Interdisciplinary Assessment
 , pp. 119 - 134
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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