According to a new research, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sea-level rise scenarios may not provide complete information for high-risk coastal decision-making and management.
The research warned that the IPCC scenarios are often inappropriate or incomplete for the management of high-risk coastal areas as they exclude the potential for extreme sea-level rises. This missing information was also crucial for a number of policy processes, such as discussions by G7 countries to establish climate insurance policies and allocations of adaptation funding by the Green Climate Funds.
The IPCC sea-level rise scenarios are developed for the purpose of understanding the physics of the earth system through process-based models, which are models based on the laws of physics. As a consequence, these scenarios cover only the central range of possible sea-level rise.
Knowing the central range was, however, generally not sufficient for coastal risk management. This was because inhabitants of densely populated coastal zones generally prefer to avoid major damage under all circumstances, so coastal planners are particularly interested in possible high-end sea-level rise scenarios beyond the IPCC range.
The researchers stated that the current subdivision of the IPCC was an area that needs to be addressed.
The study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
