Assessing storm surge impacts on coastal inundation due to climate change: case studies of Baltimore and Dorchester Coun
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Assessing storm surge impacts on coastal inundation due to climate change: case studies of Baltimore and Dorchester County in Maryland Ming Li1 · Fan Zhang1 · Samuel Barnes2 · Xiaohong Wang2 Received: 9 January 2019 / Accepted: 30 May 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Hurricane Isabel (2003) generated record flooding around Chesapeake Bay and caused extensive damage in rural Eastern Shore of Maryland and metropolitan cities like Baltimore. Regional atmosphere–ocean models are used to investigate the storm surge and coastal inundation that might be produced by a similar storm under the warmer ocean temperature and higher sea level projected for the future climate. Warming causes the storm to intensify, with the minimum sea level pressure decreasing from 955 mb during Isabel to ~ 950 mb in 2050 and ~ 940 mb in 2100. The stronger storm and higher mean sea level amplify the peak water level by ~ 0.5 m in 2050 and ~ 1.2 m in 2100. The total inundated area over Chesapeake Bay expands by 26% in 2050 and 47–62% in 2100. Over the rural Dorchester County, the inundated area shows moderate expansion in the future climate but the average inundation depth is 30% higher in 2050 and 50–70% higher in 2100. The number of houses flooded increases from 1420 during Hurricane Isabel to 1850/2190 in 2100 under the climate change scenario representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5/8.5. The inundated area in Baltimore is 2.2 k m2 during Hurricane Isabel, expands to 5.1 k m2 in 2050, and reaches 8.1/9.1 km2 in 2100 under RCP 4.5/8.5. The estimated flood damage to Baltimore increases from $29 million in 2003 to $98/100 million in 2050 and $150/162 million in 2100 under the median projection of RCP 4.5/8.5. These estimates are subjected to uncertainty due to different climate change scenarios and different climate model projections. Keywords Coastal inundation · Climate change · Sea level rise · Storm surge · Economic loss · Impact assessment
* Ming Li [email protected] 1
Horn Point Lab, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Cambridge, MD 21613, USA
2
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Salisbury University, 1101 Camden Avenue, Salisbury, MD 21801, USA
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Natural Hazards
1 Introduction As demonstrated during recent catastrophic events such as Hurricane Sandy (2012), Hurricane Harvey (2017), and Hurricane Irma (2017), coastal communities, properties, and natural resources are at great risk to coastal inundation caused by storm surge. Since the nineteenth century, storm surge has cost millions of lives and hundreds of billions dollars in economic damage (El-Sabh 1990; USGCRP 2017). Climate change is expected to increase the rate of sea-level rise (IPCC 2013; Church et al. 2013) and cause significant increases in extreme weather (Emanuel 2008; Woolings et al. 2012; Knutson et al. 2013; Eichler et al. 2013), exacerbating the coastal inundation problem. There is thus an urgent need to assess the potential impacts of storms on coastal inundation in the future clima
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