The anticipated rise in sea levels due to climate change will result in coastlines receding worldwide through erosion. This is a known phenomenon that can in principle be calculated and predicted based on a given sea-level rise, by means of the so-called Bruun effect. However, things are a little more complicated when it comes to coastlines in the vicinity of inlets, such as river mouths, lagoons and estuaries. These places are affected by other factors, such as changes in rainfall due to climate change, and certain compensating effects (basin infilling).
Until now, science has lacked a model that takes all these effects into account in the calculations of a coastline's future development, even though a demand for this existed among engineers, coastal managers and planners. The majority of coastline prognoses only took the Bruun effect into consideration.
Scientist Rosh Ranasinghe, employed as associate professor at TU Delft and at UNESCO-IHE, has now succeeded in developing a new model that is able to produce much more accurate prognoses. He did so together with researchers of the faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at TU Delft, UNESCO-IHE and knowledge institution Deltares. With the model, it is possible to make accurate predictions quickly – within a few minutes – of how the coastline will develop in the vicinity of inlets as a result of rising sea-levels....
Severe erosion at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, near southern Sloat Blvd. Shot by Amybekah, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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