Future Flood Frequency under Sea-Level Rise Scenarios

The effect of sea-level rise (SLR) on exceedance probabilities for annual flooding at coastal locations is explored in this paper. We assess four future SLR scenarios given by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and how these SLR scenarios affect monthly flooding statistics. Focusing on one case site, Annapolis, Maryland, we fit the probability density function of the monthly maximum tide gauge record with a Pareto-tail distribution. Random sampling from this distribution is then performed on top of the various future SLR scenarios. Exceedance probabilities for a storm tide to exceed the coastal flood stage, the elevation of which has already been established in a previous paper, are then calculated from the interpolated Pareto cumulative distribution. We illustrate that even mild increases in mean sea level acceleration lead to drastically higher exceedance probabilities of coastal flooding.