| Title | Estimating sea-level allowances for Atlantic Canada under conditions of uncertain sea-level rise |
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| Author | Zhai, L; Greenan, B; Hunter, J; James, T S ; Han, G |
| Source | Canadian Technical Report of Hydrography and Ocean Sciences 283, 2013, 49 pages  Open Access |
| Links | Online - En ligne
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| Image |  |
| Year | 2013 |
| Alt Series | Earth Sciences Sector, Contribution Series 20130188 |
| Publisher | Department of Fisheries and Oceans |
| Document | serial |
| Lang. | English |
| Media | paper; on-line; digital |
| File format | pdf |
| Province | Nova Scotia; Newfoundland and Labrador; New Brunswick; Quebec; Offshore region |
| NTS | 1; 2; 10; 11; 12; 20; 21; 22 |
| Area | Canadian Atlantic Coast; Sept-Iles; Rimouski; St-John's; Yarmouth; Halifax; North Sydney; Saint John; Charlottetown |
| Lat/Long WENS | -68.0000 -48.0000 52.0000 43.0000 |
| Subjects | marine geology; Nature and Environment; sea level changes; sea level fluctuations; hydrography; isostatic rebound; isostatic compensation; Climate change |
| Illustrations | location maps; plots; histograms; tables |
| Program | Climate Change Geoscience |
| Released | 2013 01 01 |
| Abstract | This report documents the methodology of computing sea-level rise allowances for Atlantic Canada in the 21st century under uncertain sea-level rise. The allowances (Hunter 2012) are defined as the
amount by which an asset needs to be raised in order to maintain the same likelihood of future flooding events as that site has experienced in the recent past. The allowances are determined by the combination of the statistics of present tides and
storm surges (storm tides) and the regional projections of sea-level rise and associated uncertainty (Hunter et al., 2013). Tide-gauge data for nine pilot sites from the Canadian Atlantic coast are used to derive the scale parameters of present
sea-level extremes using the Gumbel distribution function. The allowances in the 21st century, with respect to the year 1990, were computed at 10-year intervals for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A1FI emission scenario.
For
Atlantic Canada, the allowances are regionally variable and for the period 1990-2050, range between -13 and 38 cm while, for period 1990-2100, they range between 7 and 108 cm. The negative allowances in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are caused by land
uplift due to glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). |
| Summary | (Plain Language Summary, not published)
The report uses a new technique to determine the expected changes to extreme (high) water levels for selected locations in Atlantic Canada in response to
projected changes to mean sea-level in the 21st century. The results are presented in terms of an allowance, which is the elevation change required to experience the same frequency of flooding as that experienced in the recent past. Vertical land
motion varies over the study region, and thus the allowances, for the time range 1990-2100, range from a few tens of centimetres to slightly more than a metre. |
| GEOSCAN ID | 292922 |
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