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Sea-level allowances at 22 tide-gauge sites along the east coast of Canada are determined based on projections of regional sea-level rise for the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) from the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5) and on the statistics of historical tides and storm surges (storm tides). The allowances, which may be used for coastal infrastructure planning, increase with time during the twenty-first century through a combination of mean sea-level rise and the increased uncertainty of future projections with time. The allowances show significant spatial variation, mainly a consequence of strong regionally varying relative sea-level change as a result of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). A methodology is described for replacement of the GIA component of the AR5 projection with global positioning system (GPS) measurements of vertical crustal motion; this significantly decreases allowances in regions where the uncertainty of the GIA models is large. For RCP8.5 with GPS data incorporated and for the 1995–2100 period, the sea-level allowances range from about 0.5 m along the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to more than 1 m along the coast of Nova Scotia and southern Newfoundland.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	sea-level rise, extremes, storm tides, allowances, IPCC, AR5, Atlantic Canada, tide gauges, vertical land movement, GPS, GIA
Research Division:	Earth Sciences
Research Group:	Climate change science
Research Field:	Climate change processes
Objective Division:	Environmental Policy, Climate Change and Natural Hazards
Objective Group:	Understanding climate change
Objective Field:	Climate change models
UTAS Author:	Hunter, J (Dr John Hunter)
ID Code:	109724
Year Published:	2015
Web of Science® Times Cited:	7
Deposited By:	CRC-Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems
Deposited On:	2016-06-28
Last Modified:	2018-03-29
Downloads:	188 View Download Statistics