Forecasting Coastal Impacts Using Uncertain Sea-level Rise Projections

The understanding of sea-level rise (SLR) processes has improved significantly over the past 15-20 years. Contributions from ice sheets and ocean dynamics are increasingly well-understood, and global budgets better constrained. In addition to physically-based models, semi-empirical methods, and more recently expert elicitations, are also available to describe potential SLR. In spite of these advances, there is still large uncertainty in the magnitude and timing of SLR over the next century and beyond. How much and how fast sea-level may rise can be a significant determinant of management actions in both natural and built environments. Assessing the potential vulnerability of the coastal zone to SLR requires integrating a variety of [...]