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Responses to Climate Change Program

Coastal Storm Adaptation

RCC Program Home		Team Identification
Adaptation Challenges and Opportunities		Pilots and Demonstrations
Adaptation Implementation Framework		Regional Climate Impact Assessments
Climate Change Adaptation Communication		Regulatory Aspects of Climate Change and Adaptation
Coastal Storm Adaptation		Sea-Level Change Adaptation
Ecosystem Adaptation		Snow, Glacial, Ice Impacts and Adaptation
Greenhouse Gas Accounting		Vulnerability Assessments and Reporting
Hydrology to Support Adaptation		Water Management Adaptation

There is less knowledge and less consensus of opinion about climate change impacts on coastal storms compared to sea-level change. Nevertheless, the USACE has many projects vulnerable to coastal storms as well as sea-level change and must take action in the face of uncertainty. It is not possible to eliminate uncertainties, and new knowledge may contribute to increasing, rather than decreasing, uncertainties. With this in mind, Brekke et al. (2009) recognize that “A robust decision criterion supports selection of plans that will perform well over a wide range of possible future scenarios, although uncertainties will remain no matter how future scenarios are generated.” At this time, we must be robust to the two science opinions: that there is and will be a trend to increasing frequency, intensity, or source location (affecting tracking) or coastal storms, or there is not. Just as EC 1165-2-211 requires three scenarios in sea-level change based on different assumptions, USACE can also require that projects consider stationary and nonstationary coastal storms. Dessai et al. (2009) point out that one can “evaluate alternative responses to climate change, without necessarily relying on accurate predictions as a key step in the assessment process.” This team will compile an interagency report on coastal storm science, which will drive a climate change and coastal storms design gap analysis. The results will be used to develop costal storm vulnerability assessment methods. Critical variables and parameters will be incorporated in the coastal vulnerabilities tool described by the Sea-Level Change Adaptation team. This team will work closely with the Sea-Level Change Adaptation team to speed knowledge transfer between these closely related activities. The results will be incorporated into a Climate Change Engineer Manual.

revised 17 November 2011

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