A scale aggregrated model to estimate climate change driven coastline change along inlet interrupted coasts

Abstract

Inlet interrupted coastlines will not only be affected by direct coastline recession due to sea level rise (i.e. Bruun effect), but also by basin effects due to both climate change (CC) driven sea level rise (SLR) and variations in rainfall/runoff. This paper presents a physically based scale aggregated model to estimate potential coastline change along inlet interrupted coastlines due to both of these main climatic drivers. The model is applied to five distinctly different systems from around the world to obtain preliminary estimates of potential CC driven coastline change by 2100. Model results indicate that in areas where future rainfall/runoff will decrease (increase), potential coastline recession in the vicinity of inlets will be significantly more (less) than that due to SLR effects alone. Basin effects, and not the Bruun effect, appear to dominate CC driven coastline change on inlet interrupted coastlines.