CGRG Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology
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Author : Abeysirigunawardena, D.S.
Date : 2007.
Title : Atmospheric and sea level responses to climate variability and associated impacts on a low lying coastal system in northern British Columbia.
Publication : 2007 Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, April 17-21 2007, San Francisco, California.
Issue :
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Abstract
Atmospheric and sea level responses to climatic variability signals at multiple temporal scales (inter-decadal to monthly) are examined using long-term meteorological and tide gauge records on the north coast of BC. Relations between sea levels wind and climatic variability indices are explored to identify potential controls of climatic variability phenomena (e.g., ENSO, PDO) on regional winds and sea level trends. In addition, potential changes to local scale morphodynamics (via altered wave forcing) resulting from climatic variability and climate change, is modeled for a low lying coastal system in Northern BC. This study adopts, wave transformation modeling, linear and non-linear statistical methods including: correlation, multiple regression, Cumulative Sum (CumSum) analysis, Superposed Epoch Analysis (SEA). Results suggest that climatic variability signals such as ENSO and PDO forcing, acting on decadal to inter decadal temporal scales exerts significant influence on regional winds and sea level fluctuations. These shorter-term fluctuations are significantly greater than longer-term sea-level responses, by as much as an order of magnitude and with trends over 2x that of Mean Sea level. Results also demonstrate the need to reduce the spatial scale of climate variability induced atmospheric and oceanic forcing from regional to local scale, to better predict the potentially damaging climate variability impacts along a coastal margin. Overall conclusion of this study is that the shorter-term climatic variability impacts, though related to climate change, pose greater hazard than eustatic mean sea level trends and thus, should be of more immediate focus for the development of coastal adaptation strategies.
Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology