Michalis Ioannis Vousdoukas

University of the Aegean

Seaports are critical for global trade and development but are at risk of climate change-driven damages, operational disruptions and delays with extensive related economic losses. The aim of the present contribution is to (a) provide an overview of the main impacts of climate variability and change (CV&C) on ports; (b) present recent research on tr...

This short contribution provides a brief overview of the drivers and impacts of beach erosion at the Greek islands and Cyprus, which are under an increasing risk of erosion. The most significant beach erosion drivers have been found to be the mean and extreme sea level rise, as well as various geological (e.g., the geological setting and the dimini...

This contribution presents an assessment at a regional (island) scale of the beach erosion due to storm events under Climate Change. The approach adopted to assess beach erosion at the island scale consisted of three modules. First, the location, dimensions and other attributes of the Cypriot beaches were recorded on the basis of widely-available s...

Accurate information on waves and storm surges is essential to understand coastal hazards that are expected to increase in view of global warming and rising sea levels. Despite the recent advancement in development and application of large-scale coastal models, nearshore processes are still not sufficiently resolved due to coarse resolutions, trans...

We provide the magnitude of a worst case scenario for extreme sea levels along the global coastline by 2100. This worst case scenario for extreme sea levels is calculated as a combination of sea surface height associated with storm surge and wave (100-year return period, the 95th percentile), high tide (the 95th percentile) and a low probability se...

Coral reefs offer natural coastal protection by attenuating incoming waves. Here we combine unique coral disturbance-recovery observations with hydrodynamic models to quantify how structural complexity dissipates incoming wave energy. We find that if the structural complexity of healthy coral reefs conditions is halved, extreme wave run-up heights...

The evolution of coastal hazards in the context of climate change has been addressed at the regional scale by studying the height and frequency of extreme sea levels (ESL). However, sea level is not the only factor determining the hazard changes that can be used at this scale. Therefore, this article proposes an assessment method of coastal hazard...

Sandy beaches and dune systems have high recreational and ecological value, and they offer protection against flooding during storms. At the same time, these systems are very vulnerable to storm impacts. Process-based numerical models are presently used to assess the morphological changes of dune and beach systems during storms. However, such model...

Coral reefs offer natural coastal protection by attenuating incoming waves. Here we combine unique coral disturbance-recovery observations with hydrodynamic models to quantify how structural complexity dissipates incoming wave energy. We find that if the structural complexity of healthy coral reefs conditions is halved, extreme wave run-up heights...

The objective of the present contribution is to examine some of the potential hazards and threats for the coastal zone, induced by Climate Variability and Change (CV&C), using as case studies two Greek islands: Santorini and Crete. Beach retreat/inundation due to mean and Extreme Sea Level (ESL) rise was assessed using cross-shore morphodynamic mod...

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have been long recognized as some of the planet’s most vulnerable areas to climate change, notably to rising sea levels and coastal extremes. They have been crucial in raising ambition to keep global warming to well below 2°C and advancing the difficult debate on loss and damage. Still, quantitative estimates o...

Sandy beaches and dune systems have high recreational and ecological value, while they offer protection against flooding during storms. At the same time, these systems are very vulnerable to storm impacts. Process-based numerical models are presently used to assess the morphological changes of dune and beach systems during storms. However, such mod...

The African coast contains heritage sites of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ that face increasing risk from anthropogenic climate change. Here, we generated a database of 213 natural and 71 cultural African heritage sites to assess exposure to coastal flooding and erosion under moderate (RCP 4.5) and high (RCP 8.5) greenhouse gas emission scenarios....

Delivering infrastructure, resilient to multiple natural hazards and climate change, is fundamental to continued economic prosperity and social coherence. This is a strategic priority of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the World Bank, the OECD, public policies and global initiatives. The operability and functionality of cri...

INFORM Risk Index is a global indicator-based disaster risk assessment tool that combines hazards, exposure, vulnerability and lack of coping capacity indicators with the purpose to support humanitarian crisis management decisions considering the current climate and population. In this exploratory study, we extend the Index to include future climat...

Dune erosion driven by extreme marine storms can damage local infrastructure or ecosystems and affect the long-term flood safety of the hinterland. These storms typically affect long stretches (∼100 km) of sandy coastlines with variable topo-bathymetries. The large spatial scale makes it computationally challenging for process-based morphological m...

Floods in the Venice city centre result from the superposition of several factors: astronomical tides; seiches; and atmospherically forced fluctuations, which include storm surges, meteotsunamis, and surges caused by atmospheric planetary waves. All these factors can contribute to positive water height anomalies individually and can increase the pr...

The Paris agreement focused global climate mitigation policy on limiting global warming to 1.5 or 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. Consequently, projections of hazards and risk are increasingly framed in terms of global warming levels rather than emission scenarios. Here, we use a multimethod approach to describe changes in extreme sea levels driv...

Important heritage sites along the African coast are at risk from the threats associated with rising sea levels. Here, we quantify the exposure of natural and cultural heritage sites in Africa to coastal flooding and erosion in the 21st century. We develop a comprehensive database of 284 coastal African Heritage Sites (AHS), composed of 213 natural...

This study provides a literature‐based comparative assessment of uncertainties and biases in global to world‐regional scale assessments of current and future coastal flood risks, considering mean and extreme sea‐level hazards, the propagation of these into the floodplain, people and coastal assets exposed, and their vulnerability. Globally, by far...

Climate change and anthropogenic pressures are widely expected to exacerbate coastal hazards such as episodic coastal flooding. This study presents global-scale potential coastal overtopping estimates, which account for not only the effects of sea level rise and storm surge, but also for wave runup at exposed open coasts. Here we find that the glob...

Coastal erosion is a major issue facing Europe that will only worsen under future climate change and the resulting sea level rise. One effect of erosion is the loss of ecosystem services, which are provided by coastal areas, such as provisioning, regulating, habitat, and cultural services. These services can be quantified in monetary terms. Here, w...

Floods in the Venice city centre result from the superposition of several factors: astronomical tides, seiches and atmospherically forced fluctuations, which include storm surges, meteotsunamis, and surges caused by planetary waves. All these factors can contribute to positive sea-level anomalies individually and can also result in extreme sea-leve...

Compound flooding arises from storms causing concurrent extreme meteorological tides (that is the superposition of storm surge and waves) and precipitation. This flooding can severely affect densely populated low-lying coastal areas. Here, combining output from climate and ocean models, we analyse the concurrence probability of the meteorological c...

The Unresolved Obstacles Source Term (UOST) is a general methodology for parameterizing the dissipative effects of subscale islands, cliffs, and other unresolved features in ocean wave models. Since it separates the dissipation from the energy advection scheme, it can be applied to any numerical scheme or any type of mesh. UOST is now part of the o...

Sea level rise (SLR) will cause shoreline retreat of sandy coasts in the absence of sand supply mechanisms. These coasts have high touristic and ecological value and provide protection of valuable infrastructures and buildings to storm impacts. So far, large-scale assessments of shoreline retreat use specific datasets or assumptions for the geophys...

Interacting storm surges and high water runoff can cause compound flooding (CF) in low-lying coasts and river estuaries. The large-scale CF hazard has been typically studied using proxies such as the concurrence of storm surge extremes either with precipitation or with river discharge extremes. Here the impact of the choice of such proxies is addre...

The JRC PESETA IV study shows that ecosystems, people and economies in the EU will face major impacts from climate change if we do not urgently mitigate greenhouse gas emissions or adapt to climate change. The burden of climate change shows a clear north-south divide, with southern regions in Europe much more impacted, through the effects of extrem...

The world’s coastal areas are home to about 10% of the human population and support unique and dynamic ecosystems, offering € trillions worth of environmental and societal benefits. Climate change and anthropogenic pressures are however exacerbating devastating hazards such as episodic coastal flooding, the magnitudes of which remain highly uncerta...

Extreme sea levels (ESLs) in Europe could rise by as much as one metre or more by the end of this century due to climate change. This poses significant challenges to safeguard coastal communities. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of economically efficient protection scenarios along Europe’s coastlines during the present century. We employ a...

Climate change driven sea level rise (SLR) is expected to rise with even higher rates during the second half of the present century. This will exacerbate shoreline retreat of sandy coasts, which comprise one third of the global coastline. Sandy coasts have high touristic and ecological value while they are the first level of defense against storms,...

Preprint available here: https://eartharxiv.org/4x2u8/ Compound coastal and inland flooding can result in catastrophic impacts in densely populated low-lying coastal areas. The dynamics and interactions between the underlying meteorological drivers in view of climate change are not fully understood at global scale. Here, we show that under a high...

The interaction between storm surges and inland run-off has been gaining increasing attention recently, as they have the potential to result in compound floods. In Europe, several flood events of this type have been recorded in the past century in Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy and UK. First projections of compound flood hazard under climate chang...

Sandy beaches occupy more than one-third of the global coastline¹ and have high socioeconomic value related to recreation, tourism and ecosystem services². Beaches are the interface between land and ocean, providing coastal protection from marine storms and cyclones³. However the presence of sandy beaches cannot be taken for granted, as they are un...

Abstract. Interacting storm surges and high water-runoff can cause compound flooding (CF) in low-lying coasts and river estuaries. The large-scale CF hazard has been typically studied using proxies such as the concurrence of storm surge extremes either with precipitation or with river discharge extremes. Here the impact of the choice of such proxie...

Extreme sea levels (ESLs) in Europe could rise by as much as one meter or more due to climate change by the end of this century. Without adaptation measures, annual damages from coastal flooding in Europe could increase sharply from €1.4 billion nowadays to at least €90 billion by 2100. While damages will be lower than those figures as countries co...

This contribution presents the high-resolution Pan-European storm surge (SSL) dataset, ANYEU-SSL, produced with the SCHISM circulation model. The dataset covers 40 years (1979-2018) of SSL data along the European coastline with 3-hour temporal resolution and has been extensively validated for the period spanning from 1979 to 2016, considering the w...

Nearshore slope, defined as the cross-shore gradient of the subaqueous profile, is an important input parameter which affects hydrodynamic and morphological coastal processes. It is used in both local and large-scale coastal investigations. However, due to unavailability of data, most studies, especially those that focus on continental or global sc...

In low-lying coastal areas, the co-occurrence of high sea level and precipitation resulting in large runoff may cause compound flooding (CF). When the two hazards interact, the resulting impact can be worse than when they occur individually. Both storm surges and heavy precipitation, as well as their interplay, are likely to change in response to g...

Relative SLR influence on extreme sea level and CF. Bivariate validation. Univariate return periods. Fig. S1: Relative SLR influence on extreme sea level and CF. Fig. S2: Extreme values of sea level and precipitation. Fig. S3: Comparison of the dependence between sea level and precipitation based on ERA-Interim and observation data. Fig. S...

Transport infrastructure is exposed to natural hazards all around the world. Here we present the first global estimates of multi-hazard exposure and risk to road and rail infrastructure. Results reveal that ~27% of all global road and railway assets are exposed to at least one hazard and ~7.5% of all assets are exposed to a 1/100 year flood event....

Nearshore slope, defined as the cross-shore gradient of the subaqueous profile, is an important input parameter which affects hydrodynamic and morphological coastal processes. It is used in both local and large-scale coastal investigations. However, due to unavailability of data, most studies, especially those that focus on continental or global sc...

This contribution presents an assessment of beach erosion hazard and risk in a Caribbean Small Island Developing State (SIDS): Saint Lucia. The geo-spatial characteristics and other attributes of all ('dry') beaches of Saint Lucia were recorded from readily available satellite imagery. This information was then used in conjunction with projections...

Plain Language Summary Coastal flooding is caused by a combination of factors, among which storm surges and wind waves are of major relevance due to their potentially large contributions to coastal extreme sea levels and their widespread effects. Based on global scale numerical simulations of these two components, we have investigated the relations...

An increase of the global mean sea level has already been observed and it is expected to continue with even higher rates during the second half of the present century. This can lead to sandy shoreline retreat and permanent and increased episodic inundation of parts of the coastal zone. In order to protect human lives and assets, adaptation measures...

The Unresolved Obstacles Source Term (UOST) is a general methodology to parameterize the dissipative effects of subscale islands, cliffs and unresolved coastal features in ocean wave models. It can be applied to any numerical scheme and modulates the dissipation with spectral direction. Its applicability to practical contexts is made possible by th...

Small island states around the world are among the areas most vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise. In this paper, we present results from an innovative methodology for a quantitative assessment of multiple hazards on coastal risks, driven by different hydro-meteorological events, and including the effects of climate change. Moreover, we...

This contribution presents an assessment of the potential vulnerabilities to climate variability and change (CV & C) of the critical transportation infrastructure of Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS). It focuses on potential operational disruptions and coastal inundation forced by CV & C on four coastal international airports and four...

Operational forecasting systems are important for disaster risk reduction. In this work we implement a coupled storm surge and tidal model on an unstructured grid over Europe towards the development of a pan-European Storm Surge Forecasting System (EU-SSF). The skill to predict tidal, surge and total water levels was evaluated based on measurements...

The study assesses how climate change could affect Europe in eleven impact areas. Under a high warming scenario, several climate impacts show a clear geographical northsouth divide. Most of the welfare losses, assessed for six impact areas, would be greatly reduced under a 2ᵒC scenario. ► How to cite: ◄ Ciscar Martinez, J.-C., Ibarreta Ruiz, D.,...

Rising extreme sea levels (ESLs) and continued socioeconomic development in coastal zones will lead to increasing future flood risk along the European coastline. We present a comprehensive analysis of future coastal flood risk (CFR) for Europe that separates the impacts of global warming and socioeconomic development. In the absence of further inve...

Abstract Changes in coastal morphology have broad consequences for the sustainability of coastal communities, structures and ecosystems. Although coasts are monitored locally in many places, understanding long-term changes at a global scale remains a challenge. Here we present a global and consistent evaluation of coastal morphodynamics over 32 yea...

An upscaling of flood risk assessment frameworks beyond regional and national scales has taken place during recent years, with a number of large-scale models emerging as tools for hotspot identification, support for international policymaking, and harmonization of climate change adaptation strategies. There is, however, limited insight into the sca...

Compound flooding (CF) is an extreme event taking place in low-lying coastal areas as a result of co-occurring high sea level and large amounts of runoff, caused by precipitation. The impact from the two hazards occurring individually can be significantly lower than the result of their interaction. Both the risk of storm surges and heavy precipitat...