Contribution of Land Water Storage Change to Regional Sea-Level Rise Over the Twenty-First Century

Sitar Karabil*, Edwin H. Sutanudjaja, Erwin Lambert, Marc F.P. Bierkens, Roderik S.W. Van de Wal

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Change in Land Water Storage (LWS) is one of the main components driving sea-level rise over the twenty-first century. LWS alteration results from both human activities and climate change. Up to now, all components to sea-level change are usually quantified upon a certain climate change scenario except land water changes. Here, we propose to improve this by analyzing the contribution of LWS to regional sea-level change by considering five Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate models forced by three different Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) greenhouse gas emission scenarios. For this analysis, we used LWS output of the global hydrological and water resources model, PCR-GLOBWB 2, in order to project regional sea-level patterns. Projections of ensemble means indicate a range of LWS-driven sea-level rise with larger differences in projections among climate models than between scenarios. Our results suggest that LWS change will contribute around 10% to the projected global mean sea-level rise by the end of twenty-first century. Contribution of LWS to regional sea-level rise is projected to be considerably larger than the global mean over several regions, up to 60% higher than global average of LWS-driven sea-level rise, including the Pacific islands, the south coast of Africa and the west coast of Australia.

Original languageEnglish
Article number627648
Pages (from-to)1-10
Number of pages10
JournalFrontiers in Earth Science
Volume9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 May 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
ES and MB acknowledge the funding from World Resources Institute under the Aqueduct Flood Analyzer project that allows PCR-GLOBWB 2 simulation used in this study. The PCR-GLOBWB 2 simulation was carried out on the Dutch national e-infrastructure with the support of SURF Cooperative. Funding. SK received funding from the Netherlands Polar Programme and the Water, Climate and Future Deltas program of Utrecht University. EL was financially supported by the INSeaption project which is part of ERA4CS and ERA-NET initiative by JPI Climate and funded by NWO.

Funding Information:
SK received funding from the Netherlands Polar Programme and the Water, Climate and Future Deltas program of Utrecht University. EL was financially supported by the INSeaption project which is part of ERA4CS and ERA-NET initiative by JPI Climate and funded by NWO.

Funding Information:
ES and MB acknowledge the funding from World Resources Institute under the Aqueduct Flood Analyzer project that allows PCR-GLOBWB 2 simulation used in this study. The PCR-GLOBWB 2 simulation was carried out on the Dutch national e-infrastructure with the support of SURF Cooperative.

Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright © 2021 Karabil, Sutanudjaja, Lambert, Bierkens and Van de Wal.

Funding

ES and MB acknowledge the funding from World Resources Institute under the Aqueduct Flood Analyzer project that allows PCR-GLOBWB 2 simulation used in this study. The PCR-GLOBWB 2 simulation was carried out on the Dutch national e-infrastructure with the support of SURF Cooperative. Funding. SK received funding from the Netherlands Polar Programme and the Water, Climate and Future Deltas program of Utrecht University. EL was financially supported by the INSeaption project which is part of ERA4CS and ERA-NET initiative by JPI Climate and funded by NWO.

Keywords

  • climate models
  • climate scenarios
  • global hydrology
  • human activities
  • land water
  • sea level

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