Recent Pacific Ocean basin coastal response to inter-annual climate variability with implications for future climate change impacts

Patrick Barnard1, Andrew D Short2, Mitchell Harley3, Kristen Splinter3, Sean Vitousek1, Ian L Turner4, Jonathan C Allan5, Masayuki Banno6, Karin R Bryan7, Andre Doria8, Charles Henry Fletcher II9, Jeff Hansen10, George M Kaminsky11, Shigeru Kato12, Yoshiaki Kuriyama13, Evan Randall-Goodwin1,8, Peter Ruggiero14, Ian James Walker15 and Derek Heathfield16, (1)U.S. Geological Survey, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, Santa Cruz, CA, United States, (2)University of Sydney, Australia, (3)UNSW Australia, (4)University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia, (5)Oregon Dept of Geology, Newport, OR, United States, (6)Port and Airport Research Institute, Kanagawa, Japan, (7)University of Waikato, School of Science, Hamilton, New Zealand, (8)Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, CA, United States, (9)University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, United States, (10)University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia, (11)Washington State Department of Ecology, Olympia, WA, United States, (12)Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Japan, (13)Port and Airport Research Institute, Japan, (14)Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, United States, (15)Arizona State University, School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning, School of Earth & Space Exploration, Tempe, AZ, United States, (16)Hakai Institute, Victoria, BC, Canada
Abstract:
An unprecedented volume of coastal change data, representing over 650 years of survey data from 1979-2012 for 48 beaches, were synthesized with multi-decadal co-located wave and water level data throughout the Pacific Ocean basin to investigate coherence between coastal response and physical forcing. The observed coastal response across the Pacific is most closely related to variability in El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Therefore, the observed relationships demonstrated here allow predictions of the coastal regions to be most impacted by the projected evolution of atmospheric conditions in the Pacific Ocean basin due to 21st century global climate change. In both the northern and southern Pacific Ocean, regional wave and water-level anomalies are significantly correlated to a suite of climate indices reflecting basin-wide and regional shifts in atmospheric forcing, particularly during boreal winter, with conditions in the northeast Pacific Ocean often behaving in opposition to the western and southern Pacific. Given the anticipated evolution in climate, quantifying the link(s) between climate drivers and spatial patterns of coastal change on a global scale is essential to predict future coastal hazards and support risk management.
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