CLIMATE CHANGE AND SEA-LEVEL RISE: CHALLENGES TO COASTAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

摘要

This paper presents an overview for the current status of the impacts studies on climate change and sea-level rise focusing on the Asia and Pacific region. International research efforts such as IPCC have revealed the past trend of global warming and its future. Based on these estimates, climate change and sea-level rise could impose a wide range of impacts on the coastal zones; some of the typical impacts shown here are coastal erosion, increased flood risk, and impacts on infrastructure. A region-wide vulnerability assessment for the Asia and Pacific region is also introduced. The assessment consists of three steps; setting scenarios for sea-level rise and other external forces, assessing primary impacts in the coastal zones such as inundated and flooded areas, and assessing secondary impacts on natural and socio-economic systems. The spatial distribution of affected areas and population are estimated using global databases. Low-lying areas in the region such as deltas of Mekong River, Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers, and Yangtze River, and islands in the Pacific are most seriously inundated. The estimated amounts of inundated/flooded areas and population are quite large, indicating that the Asia and Pacific region is very vulnerable to sea-level rise and climate change. Lastly, countermeasures against these adverse effects will be examined as adaptation. Through such introduction, this paper tries to indicate new challenges to coastal science and engineering which are raised by climate change and sea-level rise.