Summary

Vertical land movements (VLM) play a crucial role in affecting the sea level rise along the coasts. They need to be estimated and included in the analysis for more accurate Sea Level (SL) projections. Here we focus on the Mediterranean basin characterized by spatially variable rates of VLM that affect the future SL along the coasts. To estimate the VLM rates we used geodetic data from continuous global navigation satellite system stations with time series longer than 4.5 years in the 1996–2023 interval, belonging to Euro-Mediterranean networks and located within 5 km from the coast. Revised SL projections up to the year 2150 are provided at 265 points on a geographical grid and at the locations of 51 tide gauges of the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level, by including the estimated VLM in the SL projections released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the AR6 Report. Results show that the IPCC projections underestimate future SL along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea since the effects of tectonics and other local factors were not properly considered. Here we show that revised SL projections at 2100, when compared to the IPCC, show a maximum and minimum differences of 1094 ± 103 mm and −773 ± 106 mm, respectively, with an average value that exceeds by about 80 mm that of the IPCC in the reference Shared Socio-economic Pathways and different global warming levels. Finally, the projections indicate that about 19.000 km2 of the considered Mediterranean coasts will be more exposed to risk of inundation for the next decades, leading to enhanced impacts on the environment, human activities and infrastructures, thus suggesting the need for concrete actions to support vulnerable populations to adapt to the expected SL rise and coastal hazards by the end of this century.

The main coastal plains of the Mediterranean basin are underlined in red. The geospatial analysis highlights that the total area of the coastal plains of the Mediterranean region potentially prone to be flooded is about 38 529 km². The most affected countries are Egypt (12.879 km²), Italy (10.060 km²) and France (3.681 km²).

How to cite and download publication:

Antonio Vecchio, Marco Anzidei and Enrico Serpelloni. Sea level rise projections up to 2150 in the northern Mediterranean coasts. Environmental Research Letters, 2023. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ad127e

Readme - data Sea Level Rise (SLR) projections for years 2030-2150 (relative to 2020) for the Mediterranean coasts.

The revised SLR projections in mm are provided on a 0.5°x0.5° geographical grid and at selected tide gauge stations of the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL, https://psmsl.org/data/obtaining/)

SLR at grid points.

The revised SLR projections are provided in 5 grid and 5 Tlim files in the directory sspXXX_grid and T_Y_grid. Each projection corresponds to one of the revised SSP and Tlim IPCC AR6 scenarios.

Revised RSLR projections are named SL_ssp_name_grid YEAR

1 sigma error for each SL_ssp_name_grid YEAR, are named err_SL_ssp_name_grid_YEAR.

Data in Esri ASCII raster format with a six-row header. ASCII header information:

NCOLS: number of cell columns NROWS: number of cell rows

XLLCORNER: X-coordinate of the origin in degrees (by lower left corner of the cell) YLLCORNER: Y-coordinate of the origin in degrees (by lower left corner of the cell) CELLSIZE: Cell size in degrees

NODATA_VALUE: Default is -9999.

SLR at selected PSMSL stations.

The revised SLR projections in mm at the selected PSMSL stations are in the directories. Projections_PSMSL where each SLR projection corresponds to one of the revised SSP and Tlim IPCC AR6 projections named SL_ssp_name_PSMSL_YEAR

Data are ascii file with the extension .txt, Latitude (lat) and Longitude (lon) of the station SL (mm), err_SL (mm), are provided.

SLR at grid points.

The VLM rates in mm are provided in the directory VLM_grid and named vlm_grid. 1 sigma error for VLM rates are provided in the directory VLM_grid and named

err_vlm_grid.

How to cite data of Data Sea Level Rise (RSLR) projections for years 2030-2150 (relative to 2020) for the Mediterranean coasts

Antonio Vecchio, Marco Anzidei and Enrico Serpelloni. Sea level rise projections up to 2150 in the northern Mediterranean coasts. Environmental Research Letters, 2023. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ad127e