Journal of Coastal Research 29 1 1–7 Coconut Creek, Florida January 2013

Scenario-Based Projection of Extreme Sea Levels

Jayantha Obeysekera† and Joseph Park‡

† ‡
Hydrologic and Environmental Systems Modeling NOAA/NOS/CO-OPS
South Florida Water Management District 1305 East West Highway
3301 Gun Club Road Silver Spring, MD 20910, U.S.A.
West Palm Beach, FL 33406, U.S.A.
jobey@sfwmd.gov

ABSTRACT
Obeysekera, J. and Park, J., 2013. Scenario-based projection of extreme sea levels. Journal of Coastal Research, 29(1), 1–
7. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.

Heavily populated urban centers and natural areas located in low-lying coastal regions are highly vulnerable to sea-level
extremes. Historical data at many tide gages suggest that changes over time in extremes generally follow the rise in
mean sea level. Assuming this observation to hold in the future, a relationship between mean sea-level rise and its
associated extremes with a generalized extreme value distribution can provide future return levels of extreme sea levels.
Current projections of future sea level, which include varying degrees of acceleration, may result in large increases in
extremes that need to be accounted for in the evaluation of existing coastal projects or in the planning of new ones.
Because precise quantitative estimates of the uncertainties in sea-level rise projections are not available, scenario-based
approaches have been suggested for project evaluation and design. Here, we propose a general method based on the
synthesis of extreme value statistics with sea-level rise scenarios that allows any combination of linear or nonlinear local
and global sea-level rise components and can accommodate the nonstationary evolution of sea-level extremes. The
temporal variation of the design level of protection for coastal projects, expressed as the return period of extreme events,
and the future behavior of the risk are explored. The concepts are demonstrated through application to tide gage data at
several locations in the United States.

ADDITIONAL INDEX WORDS: Sea level extremes, generalized extreme value distribution, climate change, risk,
nonstationarity.

INTRODUCTION
Low-lying regions and heavily developed coastal zones with
dense population are particularly vulnerable to extreme sea
levels. In a study of port cities across the globe, Nicholls et al.
(2008) estimated that about 40 million people, 0.6% of the
global population, are currently exposed each year to coastal
flooding of events that may exceed the 100-year flood. Titus et
al. (2009) estimated that almost 60% of the land below 1 m
along the Atlantic Coast of the United States is expected to be
developed further, increasing future vulnerability to coastal
extremes. Extreme sea levels are influenced by a combination
of factors, which include astronomical tides, waves and
currents, extreme weather phenomena, and teleconnections
to such global phenomena as El Niño-Southern Oscillation.
These extremes are also influenced by sea-level rise associated
with long-term volume changes in the oceans attributable to
thermal loading and melting of ice sheets and freshwater
inputs from land. Extremes relative to a land-based datum are
additionally influenced by vertical land movement (VLM)
associated with subsidence or uplift that might occur due to
many factors.
DOI: 10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-12-00127.1 received 25 June 2012;
accepted in revision 11 August 2012; corrected proofs received 15
October 2012.
Published Pre-print online 6 November 2012.
Ó Coastal Education & Research Foundation 2013
Impacts of coastal extremes include, but are not limited to,
shoreline erosion, submergence of coastal wetlands and
mangrove areas, and the reduction of discharge capacity of
coastal water control structures (Obeysekera et al., 2010). In
view of projected increases in global mean sea level, by some
estimates upwards of 1 m or more by 2100, the expected
extreme sea water level at a particular location will increase at
least in a similar magnitude, and such increases in the future
will exacerbate the impacts of storm surges and waves,
particularly in low-lying regions of the world.
Global sea-level rise projections for the 21st century, as
reported in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (IPCC,
2007a), were in the range of 0.18 to 0.59 m. However, it is
important to note that the IPCC in its 2007 synthesis report
qualified the projections as follows:
The sea level projections do not include uncertainties in
climate-carbon cycle feedbacks nor do they include the
full effects of changes in ice sheet flow, because a basis in
published literature is lacking. Therefore the upper
values of the ranges given are not to be considered
upper bounds for sea level rise. The projections include a
contribution due to increased ice flow from Greenland
and Antarctica at the rates observed for 1993–2003, but
these flow rates could increase or decrease in the future.
If this contribution were to grow linearly with global
2 Obeysekera and Park
average temperature change, the upper ranges of sea
level rise for SRES scenarios ... would increase by 0.1 to
0.2m. (IPCC, 2007b, p. 45)
As indicated previously, the IPCC report did not exclude a
possible larger rise due to highly uncertain ice sheet dynamics
because it did not have sufficient information to adjust the
projections. An alternative approach using semi-empirical
methods linking sea-level rise (SLR) to global temperature
has provided larger estimates of global SLR than what was
provided in the IPCC report (Rahmstorf, 2007; Vermeer and
Rahmstorf, 2009). Various other methods of projection have
provided a broad range of global SLR in the literature, but they
do not provide sufficient information on the likelihood of a
particular magnitude. Few attempts have been made to
provide probabilistic projections of global SLR (Horton et al.,
2008; Hunter, 2010; Obeysekera et al., 2012; Titus and
Narayanan, 1995).
Through the analysis of long-term tide gage data, some
studies have found that historical sea-level data indicate little
or no acceleration (Houston and Dean, 2011; Watson, 2011).
However, Sallinger, Doran, and Howd (2012) recently found
that the Atlantic coast of North America is a hotspot for
accelerated sea-level rise attributable to variations in ocean
circulation and salinity patterns. In addition, many global and
regional studies, mostly using satellite altimetry data available
since the early 1990s, have also detected a higher rate of sea
level rise as compared to those indicated by the tide gages
(Holgate and Woodworth, 2004). Due to the short length of the
record it is difficult to attribute the recent increase in the rate of
sea-level rise to a particular factor, and such rates of similar
magnitude have occurred in the sea-level data reconstructed
from tide gages. Numerous projections available for the 21st
century consider increasing rates of sea-level rise, i.e. acceler-
ation (Houston, 2012; IPCC, 2007a). For example, IPCC AR4
report (IPCC, 2007a, p. 821) concludes that ‘‘In all scenarios,
the average rate of rise during the 21st century is very likely to
exceed the 1961 to 2003 average rate of 1.8 6 0.5 mm yr1.’’
In addition to societal and infrastructure impacts from mean
sea-level rise, the consideration of future extremes is important
for the planning and design of coastal infrastructure (Zhang,
Douglas, and Leatherman, 2000). Menéndez and Woodworth
(2010) analyzed sea-level extremes of a quasi-global sea-level
dataset and suggested that changes in extremes over time are
attributable to change in the mean sea level. Lowe et al. (2010)
reviewed several previous investigations and concluded that
there is little evidence for extreme sea-level changes that are
significantly different from mean sea level over an extended
period of time and that these findings have also been
corroborated by others (Araújo and Pugh, 2008; Park et al.,
2010; Woodworth and Blackman, 2004). The observation that
increases in historical extremes can be related simply to
increases in mean sea level simplifies the incorporation of time-
dependent changes of the extremes into the probabilistic
evaluation of future scenarios and risks (Obeysekera et al.,
2012). However, several studies on the both the east and west
coasts of the United States have demonstrated additional
nonstationarity in extreme sea levels due to changes in
storminess (e.g. Komar and Allan, 2008; Ruggiero, Komar,
Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2013
and Allan, 2010). Currently, projections based on dynamical
models are not sufficiently accurate to suggest whether any
nonstationary behavior of storminess will continue at the
historical rate or how it may change during the 21st century
due to climate change. However, it is important for a scenario-
based method to accommodate the treatment of possible
nonstationarity in the probability distribution of sea-level
extremes (Menéndez and Woodworth, 2010; Ruggiero, Komar,
and Allan, 2010).
The general lack of an acceptable practice in prescribing
fixed or probabilistic projections of SLR have led to
‘‘scenario-based’’ guidance, including a range of possible
acceleration for planning and design of future infrastructure
projects (NRC, 1987; USACE, 2011). This paper uses the
scenario-based approach to project changes in mean sea
level and then couples these projections with extreme value
statistics derived from tide gage data to project changes in
design life and extreme event return periods for coastal
infrastructure. The method allows any combination of linear
or nonlinear sea-level rise components, including zero or
nonzero acceleration, and can easily incorporate a nonsta-
tionary evolution of sea-level extremes. In the next section,
methods for predicting the nonstationary behavior of the
extreme sea levels, the associated probabilities of exceedance
or, equivalently, the return period, and the risk of a coastal
project are presented. The paper concludes by demonstrat-
ing the application of the method for several tide gage
locations in the United States.
METHODS
Scenario-Based Global Sea-Level Rise Projections
Scenario planning has been a useful tool for dealing with
uncertainties of projections associated with climate change and
sea-level rise. Based on a methodology developed by the U.S.
National Research Council (NRC, 1987), the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers (USACE, 2011) has developed such a scenario-
based approach for considering sea-level rise across the life
cycle of a project. In this paper, the scenarios proposed in the
USACE methodology are coupled with the probabilistic
projections of extremes without any loss of generality in the
overall approach.
The proposed method consolidates various sources of sea-
level rise at a particular location into two components: a
eustatic component representing the global sea-level rise, and a
local component representing factors such as uplift/subsidence
attributable to anthropogenic and natural causes, regional
oceanographic forcing, and postglacial rebound in the form of
glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) (Jiang, Dixon, and Wdowin-
ski, 2010; Peltier, 1999):
SðtÞ ¼ GðtÞ þ LðtÞ: ð1Þ
In Equation (1), G(t) represents the global contribution and
L(t) represents the local component attributable to VLM and
other aforementioned location specific factors, both assumed to
vary as functions of time, t. For the global component of mean
sea level, we use the quadratic form (NRC, 1987; USACE,
2011):
 Scenario-Based Projection of Extreme Sea Levels
GðtÞ ¼ at þ bt2 ; ð2Þ
where a and b are coefficients representing a base rate and
acceleration of sea level, respectively. The use of the
quadratic form allows the incorporation of potential acceler-
ation, which is largely absent in historical data but expected
in the future due to increased melting of land-based ice
sheets. However, it is noted that the acceleration itself may
not be constant, as implied in the quadratic form, and such
nonlinearities may further complicate future sea-level pro-
jections. In view of the lack of information on a possible
nonconstant acceleration term, the approach presented in the
ensuing sections assumes that the quadratic form is valid, as
used in NRC (1987) and USACE (2011).
The local component in Equation (1) may exhibit significant
spatial and interannual variability, as it represents localized
VLM and oceanographic, meteorological, and geophysical
forcings (Prandi, Cazenave, and Becker, 2009). In cases where
local tide gage data are unavailable, models for the GIA and the
estimates of VLM, possibly from measurements of Global
Position Systems (GPS), can provide estimates of linear rates
that can be used over the typical planning horizons of coastal
projects. Consistent with earlier studies (NRC, 1987; Obeyse-
kera et al., 2012), it is assumed that the local component varies
linearly with time, although the proposed methodology can be
generalized easily if quantitative information regarding non-
linear variation of factors affecting relative sea-level rise
becomes available. The only quantification of nonlinear
lithospheric uplift that the authors are aware of is the work
of Jiang, Dixon, and Wdowinski (2010), which suggested an
accelerating uplift in the North Atlantic region in response to
rapid glacial ice reduction.
Because L(t) is assumed to represent a linear contribution (in
time), one can combine it with the linear term in G(t) so that the
total mean sea-level rise, S, can be represented as
SðtÞ ¼ ½ LðtÞ þ at þ bt2 ¼ ct þ bt2 ; ð3Þ
in which the coefficient c incorporates both linear contributions
of the global rise as well as the local component. With this
formulation the coefficients c and b represent the current rate
of sea-level rise and acceleration, respectively (Obeysekera et
al., 2012). In general, the quadratic form in Equation (3) models
a nonlinear increase in SLR. In a scenario-based approach
based on the premise that the rate of acceleration over the
planning horizon is not known precisely, several scenarios for
the sea-level rise can be developed by using varying values for
the coefficient b. For example, using c ¼ 0.0017 m/y, which is
equal to global average SLR rate (Church and White, 2011),
USACE (2011) included three scenarios dubbed ‘‘modified
NRC-I, II, and III’’ with b values equal to 2.71 3 105, 7 3 105,
and 1.13 3 104, respectively. It should be noted that these
values for the coefficient b were not estimated from historical
data but rather computed from assumed scenarios for total sea-
level rise by 2100 (USACE, 2011). The approach provides
multiple scenarios that may be used to plan and design coastal
projects and infrastructure, which are expected to last many
decades into the future. Which scenarios should be considered
in planning and design depends on many factors, for example,
the planning horizon and consequences of failure.
Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2013
3
Scenario-Based Extremes
In the theory of extremes the asymptotic distribution known
as the generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution is widely
used (Coles, 2001; Tomasin and Pirazzoli, 2008). In particular,
Coles (2001) presents an example modeling sea-level extremes
using the GEV distribution. The use of GEV has the advantage
that future nonstationarity can be included explicitly by using
time-dependent parameters. Specifically for the proposed
approach, the cumulative distribution function for the GEV of
the extreme (annual maximum) relative sea-level rise (SE) is
expressed as
(    )
SE  lðtÞ 1=e
FðSE ; tÞ ¼ exp  1 þ e ; ð6aÞ
rðtÞ
where l(t) is the location parameter representing the time-
dependent sea-level rise, and r(t) and e are the scale and shape
parameters of the GEV, respectively. When e  0, Equation (6)
reduces to the well-known Gumbel distribution (Coles, 2001):
  
SE  lðtÞ
FðSE ; tÞ ¼ exp exp : ð6bÞ
rðtÞ
The nonstationarity in extreme sea-level behavior, either
attributable to continuing increase in the mean sea level and/or
changing storminess, may be modeled by assuming that both
the location parameter, l, and the shape parameter, r, are time
dependent, as shown in Equation (6) (Menéndez and Wood-
worth, 2010). For instance, the ‘‘upper bound’’ of the annual
maxima may also increase with time, and in such cases the
scale parameter may have to be modeled as a function of time.
Some examples are l(t) ¼ l0 þ l1t and log{r(t)} ¼ r0 þ r1t
(Ruggiero, Komar, and Allan, 2010). The parameters can also
be modeled as functions of exogenous variables as covariates.
The shape parameter, e, is difficult to estimate with precision;
therefore, it is not normally modeled as a function of time
(Coles, 2001). Typically, the length of the tide gauge data is not
long enough to determine the time-dependent functions of
parameters, and, therefore, as a first approximation, we
assume only l varies with time and that both r and e are
constant. This assumption still allows the extreme value
distribution to be nonstationary but only through the variation
in the location parameter.
As previously discussed, evidence supports a simple linear
relationship between the evolution of mean sea level and
statistics of the coastal extremes. Hence, it is suggested that an
offset relating mean sea-level rise to parameters of the extreme
value distribution at a particular location. More specifically,
the dynamic change in extremes is modeled by assuming that
the location of parameter is related to the mean sea level
according to the following expression:
lðtÞ ¼ SðtÞ þ eðtÞ; ð7Þ
where e(t) is a positive offset to the mean sea level, which in
general may be a function of time, t.
The reasonableness of this assumption was investigated
using hourly sea-level data for several gages along the coast of
the United States, available from the University of Hawaii Sea
Level Center (UHSLC, 2011). Figure 1 shows the results of the
investigation for about five out of 29 gages for which the annual
4 Obeysekera and Park

Figure 1. Locations of the tide gages across the United States used to investigate the relationship between mean sea level and the location parameter of the GEV
(upper middle). Plots of mean annual sea level, annual extremes, and the fitted lines for the mean sea level and the location parameter of the fitted GEV for the
following five locations are also shown: SF-San Francisco; SD-San Diego; GP21-Galveston Pier 21; KW-Key West; and AC-Atlantic City. (Color for this figure is
available in the online version of this paper.)

mean sea level and the annual extremes show a clear r

RE ðt; pÞ ¼ ct þ bt2 þ e  ½1  flnð1  pÞge  ð9aÞ
interdependence. For the five stations, the linear fit for the e
mean sea level and the fitted time-dependent location param- for the case of e „ 0; for e  0,
eter (l) of the GEV (both shown as solid straight lines) are
shown. It is clear that the fixed offset assumption in Equation 7 RE ðt; pÞ ¼ ct þ bt2 þ e  rlnflnð1  pÞg: ð9bÞ
relating the location parameter of the extreme sea levels with
mean sea level is reasonable. A simple t test to compare slopes It should be noted that in deference to the typical approach of
of linear fits to mean sea level and the annual extrema finds assuming stationarity in the application of extreme value
that over 60% of the stations sampled (Figure 1) did not show a distribution, the return level corresponding to a particular
significant difference at the 5% level. However, in the event exceedance probability, p, is a function of time, and hence the
that slopes are different, or behavior of extremes relative to nonstationarity can be modeled explicitly.
mean sea level is nonlinear, the methodology can be modified
easily to incorporate such differences.
Nonstationarity in Return Period and Risk
For planning and design, a return level corresponding to a Assume that a structure, such as a sea wall, is designed for a
particular probability of exceedance, p, or equivalently the particular return period s0 ¼ 1/p0 and completion at time t0.
return period, s ¼ 1/p is desired. For the GEV in Equation 6 the Equations 9(a) or 9(b) can be used to compute the design return
return level is given by (Coles, 2001) level, R0 ¼ RE(t0; p0). Because the mean sea level is increasing
with time, the future return period s(t) or the level of protection
r
RE ðt; pÞ ¼ lðtÞ  ½1  flnð1  pÞge : ð8aÞ relative to the original design will decrease with time. Return
e
period as a function of time, t, relative to t0, is given by
When e  0, the corresponding expression is
1
RE ðt; pÞ ¼ lðtÞ  rlnflnð1  pÞg: ð8bÞ sðtÞ ¼ h 1=e i ð10aÞ
e
1  exp  1þ r ðR0  ct  bt2  eÞ
Equations 8(a) and 8(b) may be combined with Equations (3)
and (7) to yield for the case of e „ 0; while for e  0,

Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2013

 Scenario-Based Projection of Extreme Sea Levels 5

Table 1. Parameters of the fitted GEV distributions, slopes of mean sea level, and the location parameter and the computed offset, e, for the five tide gage
locations shown in Figure 1.

Record Slope of Slope of Location Scale Shape

Location State Length the MSL Parameter Parameter (r) Parameter (e) Offset (e)
Atlantic City New Jersey 97 3.987 5.556 151.72 0.089 1376
Galveston Pier21 Texas 107 6.331 6.522 161.57 0.318 676
Key West Florida 95 2.322 2.604 52.56 0.199 552
San Diego California 102 2.024 2.234 58.11 0.184 1396
San Francisco California 111 1.932 2.543 90.80 0.062 1286

1 West gage is the period 1983–2001, and the reference year for
sðtÞ ¼
  : ð10bÞ
1  exp exp r1 ðct þ bt2 þ e  R0 Þ
A change in the return period corresponding to the original
design implies that the corresponding risk of failure will also be
a function of time. Risk of failure here is defined as the
occurrence of one or more exceedances of the design return
level over the design life of a project. In the stationary case
where s does not change with time, the expression for risk r for
planning horizon of n years is given by
r ¼ 1  ð1  pÞn ¼ 1  ð1  1=sÞn :
Under nonstationary conditions, we define a new concept
called ‘‘remaining risk.’’ Assuming that a project has survived
up to a particular time, ts, since its completion at time t0, the
risk of failure over the remaining life of the project, i.e.
remaining risk, will actually decrease with time even under the
conditions of stationarity. However, under conditions of non-
stationarity, i.e. change in s, the rate of risk reduction will be
smaller. The risk over the remaining life of the project, denoted
as rr is given by
Yn   sea-level rise at Key West, as computed using Equation (7), are
1
rrðts Þ ¼ 1  1 : ð12Þ
k¼t
sðkÞ
s (7), and 8(a) can now be used to compute the temporal variation
If the change in risk is unacceptable, it may be used as a
measure for determining when to implement an adaptation
measure to retrofit or replace a project.
Applications
Parameter Estimation
The concepts presented in the previous section are illustrated
with application to several locations along the coast of the
United States (Figure 1). The fitted parameters for the five
locations identified in Figure 1 are shown in Table 1. The tide
gages have an average record length of over 100 years. These
stations are shown to illustrate some special cases that may
arise in the application of the previous methodology. First,
the slope of the mean sea level may be different from that of
the location parameter, as is the case for Atlantic City and
San Francisco tide gages. In this case, the offset may not be
fixed but a function of time. Second, it is not uncommon to
have the fitted shape parameter that is negative or almost
close to zero. In the case of the latter, the Gumbel extreme
value distribution may be more appropriate. It is noted that
the previous methodology can deal with such situations.
The results are further illustrated for the Key West gage,
which is located in one of the most vulnerable locations for sea-
level rise. The National Tide Datum Epoch (NTDE) for the Key
all calculations is the midpoint of NTDE, which is 1992
(USACE, 2011). In the absence of any apparent nonlinearity
in the historical trend, the prevailing rate of sea-level rise for
the reference year (i.e. parameter c in Equation [3]), is assumed
to be equal to the linear trend computed for the entire period of
record. For the Key West gage, c is equal to 2.32 mm/y. The
GEV fitting of the annual extremes with a linear trend for the
location parameter was accomplished by using the R-package
extRemes (Gilleland and Katz, 2011), and the corresponding
ð11Þ results for the remaining parameters are r ¼ 52.56 (4.8) mm
and e ¼ 0.199 (0.08), where quantities in parentheses
correspond to standard errors of the parameter estimate. The
fixed offset e in Equation (7) is computed as the average
difference between the two trend lines for the Key West gage
shown in Figure 1. The computed value for e is 552 mm.
Following USACE (2011), three scenarios are considered: low
(historical rate), intermediate (corresponding to NRC-I), and
high (corresponding to NRC-III). Using the corresponding
value of the parameter b as specified in USACE (2011) and the
computed value for c previously, the three scenarios of mean
shown in Figure 2a. For each of the scenarios, Equations (3),
of return level for a given return period, s. Figure 2b shows
example curves for s ¼ 100 years.
To examine the nonstationarity in return period (s) and risk
(r), assume that the design period for a project in the vicinity of
Key West is s0 ¼ 100 years, its project life is n ¼ 50 years, and its
completion date is 2010. Equations 10(a) and (12) can now be
used to explore the future reduction in return period, s(t), and
the temporal pattern of risk reduction. For this case, the
variation of s(t) for each of the three scenarios is shown in
Figure 3(a). The ‘‘stationary’’ case shown in Figure 3(b)
assumes that the return period of 100 years will not change
over the design life.
Some interesting patterns of nonstationary behavior in both
return period and remaining risk can be seen from Figure 3.
Return period reduction can be very drastic in the case of
‘‘high’’ sea-level rise scenario. By 2040, i.e. 30 years after the
completion of the project, the corresponding return period may
be as low as 57 years, 36 years, or 6 years for low, intermediate,
and high SLR scenarios. Clearly, depending on the scenario,
this is a drastic reduction in the level of protection for the
project. The original risk of exceedance (i.e. one or more over
the design life) is 39%. By 2040, the risk over the remaining life
(over 20 years left) would be about 18%. However, this risk
would increase to 35%, 63%, and 100% for the low, interme-

Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2013

6 Obeysekera and Park
Figure 2. (a) Mean sea level and (b) return level corresponding to return
period ¼ 100 years for low, intermediate, and high mean sea-level rise
scenarios based on historic tide gauge data from Key West, Florida. (Color for
this figure is available in the online version of this paper.)
diate, and high scenarios, respectively. It should be noted that
for the high scenario the risk remains at 100% throughout the
design life due to the fact that toward the end of the design life,
the return period decreases to 1 year, implying that the
exceedance of the design return level is certain. Because the
remaining risk is an aggregation of all remaining years of the
project, the risk remains high throughout the planning horizon.
DISCUSSION
The approach presented here is general in that the
methodology allows one to relax some of the assumptions
regarding linearity and nonstationarity without a major effort.
Using tide gage data most parameters necessary for application
of the method can be obtained. However, the parameters of the
GEV distribution may have significant uncertainties in case of
short records. Gage records less than 60–70 years may not be
sufficient to obtain reliable of estimates of long-term trends
primarily due to the presence of multidecadal variations. In
such cases, it may be possible to model the extremes using the
generalized Pareto distribution using the peaks-over-threshold
method (Coles, 2001; Mendez et al., 2006). An alternative
approach is to use long-term gages in the region and transfer
information to a particular location of interest with necessary
adjustments for localized conditions. Furthermore, storm-
surge modeling may help identify the offset between the mean
sea level and the extremes.
Because of the uncertainties in predicting future sea-level
rise and more importantly the potential magnitude of expected
acceleration, a scenario-based approach is deemed appropriate.
Scenario selection for a particular project depends on many
factors and, in some cases such as projects near the coast
designed for low probability–high consequence events (e.g. a
nuclear power plant), consideration of a high sea-level rise
scenario may be warranted. In others cases, use of low and
Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2013
Figure 3. (a) Future reduction in the 100-year design period of a project
completed in 2010 based on historic tide gauge data from Key West, Florida.
(b) Variation of risk remaining until the end of design life for project with a
50-year design life. The green curve shown in (b) plots the risk reduction in
the stationary case if the return period remains 100 years throughout the
design life.
intermediate scenarios may be adequate. The approach
presented here also provides a means for planning adaptation
strategies. The nonstationary, extreme value analysis present-
ed here quantifies the risk of exceeding the design return level
of the project as a function of time, which may be used to
determine the timing of changes necessary to accommodate
future sea-level rise. For example, if the future sea-level rise is
observed to follow a particular scenario, planners and engi-
neers can obtain a general sense of when a particular design
risk level would be exceeded and could plan up front for any
retrofit or a replacement. In considering such a strategy, risk
tolerance can be incorporated.
CONCLUSIONS
Future sea level is an important constraint on the planning
and retrofitting of coastal infrastructure. In view of the recent
focus on nonstationarity in climate (Milly et al., 2008) and
associated sea-level regimes, past information from tide gauges
may have limited utility. Planners and engineers need to
accommodate the potential for accelerating sea-level rise using
a scenario-based approach and consider future changes to the
level of protection in the design of their project. As sea level and
climate dynamics continue to evolve in the coming decades, the
impact of extreme events on coastal infrastructure will require
careful scrutiny. Synthesis of sea-level rise projections with
extreme value statistics of sea-level exceedences, as demon-
strated in this paper, will allow the designer to explore changes
in future risk based on parameters determined by historical
tide records. One of the primary conclusions conveyed by
application of the method is the significant (some might say
alarming) nonlinearity and reduction in extreme sea-level
return periods over time. Effectively, the time to failure is being
compressed in time in an exponential fashion. This reduction in
 Scenario-Based Projection of Extreme Sea Levels
design life and increase in risk is associated with a sensitive
dependence on the acceleration of the sea-level rise scenario.
Future work may require the acceleration-based scenarios to
be expressed in terms of probabilistic projections and then
integrated into the proposed methods.
As a final comment, the concepts presented here may be used
for others cases where nonstationarity associated with climate
change is present. A classic situation is the design of a flood
control project using the concepts of design floods with a
particular return period.
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