Contribution of Land Water Storage Change to Regional Sea-Level Rise Over the Twenty-First Century

S. Karabil, E.H. Sutanudjaja, E. Lambert, M.F.P. Bierkens, R.S.W. van de Wal

Change in Land Water Storage (LWS) is one of the main components driving sea-level
rise over the twenty-first century. LWS alteration results from both human activities
and climate change. Up to now, all components to sea-level change are usually
quantified upon a certain climate change scenario except land water changes. Here,
we propose to improve this by analyzing the contribution of LWS to regional sea-level
change by considering five Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5)
climate models forced by three different Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP)
greenhouse gas emission scenarios. For this analysis, we used LWS output of the global
hydrological and water resources model, PCR-GLOBWB 2, in order to project regional
sea-level patterns. Projections of ensemble means indicate a range of LWS-driven sea-
level rise with larger differences in projections among climate models than between
scenarios. Our results suggest that LWS change will contribute around 10% to the
projected global mean sea-level rise by the end of twenty-first century. Contribution
of LWS to regional sea-level rise is projected to be considerably larger than the global
mean over several regions, up to 60% higher than global average of LWS-driven sea-
level rise, including the Pacific islands, the south coast of Africa and the west coast of
Australia.

Bibliographic data

S. Karabil, E.H. Sutanudjaja, E. Lambert, M.F.P. Bierkens, R.S.W. van de Wal. Contribution of Land Water Storage Change to Regional Sea-Level Rise Over the Twenty-First Century
Journal: Frontiers in Earth Science, Volume: 9, Year: 2021, doi: 10.3389/feart.2021.627648