A modest 0.5-m rise in sea level will double the tsunami hazard in Macau

• Main Authors: Switzer, Adam Douglas, Wang, Yu, Chan, Chung-Han, Qiu, Qiang, Weiss, Robert, Li, Linlin
• Other Authors: Asian School of the Environment
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Hazard; Flood; DRNTU::Science::Geology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/89015; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/46034
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Rising sea levels will have overwhelmingly negative impacts on coastal communities globally. With previous research focused on how sea-level rise (SLR) affects storm-induced flooding, we show that SLR will also increase both the frequency and the intensity of tsunami-induced flooding, another significant coastal hazard associated with sea-level extremes. We developed probabilistic tsunami inundation maps for Macau, a densely populated coastal city located in the South China Sea, under current sea-level, 0.5-m SLR, and 1-m SLR conditions, using an extensive Monte Carlo tsunami inundation simulation. Our results indicate that conservative amounts of SLR of 0.5 m (by 2060) and 1 m (by 2100) would dramatically increase the frequency of tsunami-induced flooding incidences by a factor of 1.2 to 2.4 and 1.5 to 4.7, respectively.