Sunna Kupfer

• Master of Science
• PhD Student at Kiel University

Estuarine areas are currently at risk of compound flooding, the frequency and intensity of which is expected to increase with climate change. Even though efforts are made to adapt against single flood drivers using hard protection, potential subsequent changes in flood risk due to compound flooding are often overlooked in flood risk assessments. Th...

The record storm surge of October 2023, which hit the southwestern German Baltic Sea, not only resulted in significant damages to coastal communities and infrastructure but also demonstrated that the region was prepared and able to avoid loss of lives and other catastrophic impacts. Numerical modelling has been a key tool utilised for providing inf...

Adaptive decision‐making allows decision‐makers to plan long‐term coastal infrastructure under uncertain sea level rise projections. To date, economic assessments of adaptive decision‐making that take into account future learning about sea level rise uncertainty are rare and the existing ones have relied on simple quantification of future learning...

Flood characteristics caused by extreme sea level (ESL) events depend largely on the magnitude of peak water levels (WLs) and their temporal evolution. However, coastal flood risk is generally assessed based on only a limited number of potential peak WLs and a selection of past events or a design hydrograph. We address this gap and systematically e...

The Agulhas Current system around South Africa combines the dynamics of strong ocean currents in the Indian Ocean with eddy–mean flow interactions. The system includes an associated interoceanic transport towards the Atlantic, Agulhas leakage, which varies on both interannual and decadal timescales. Agulhas leakage is subject to a general increase...

The high number of human assets along the coast and its morphology makes the Apulia region particularly at risk because of the ongoing sea level rise. Some risks are directly human-related, others are caused by climate change, others by natural variability and its effect on extreme weather events. In the last decades the expansion of coastal settle...

Recent studies on compound flooding have considered the interaction of storm-tide and fluvial or pluvial flood drivers, whereas the contribution of waves to compound flooding so far has been neglected. In this study, we investigate compound flooding from waves, tides and river discharge at Breede Estuary, South Africa, using a hydrodynamic model. W...

Recent studies have drawn special attention to the significant dependencies between flood drivers and the occurrence of compound flood events in coastal areas. This study investigates compound flooding from tides, river discharge (Q), and specifically waves using a hydrodynamic model at the Breede Estuary, South Africa. We quantify vertical and hor...

Overwash is one of the most prominent hazards affecting coastal zones, and the associated consequences are expected to increase because of both sea-level rise and intensification of coastal occupation. This study used a 23-year data set of wave heights and tide-surge levels to define return periods of overwash potential for current and future sea-l...

Recent studies have drawn special attention to the significant dependencies between flood drivers and the occurrence of compound flood events in coastal areas. This study investigates compound flooding from tides, river discharge (Q) and specifically waves using a hydrodynamic model at Breede Estuary, South Africa. We quantify vertical and horizont...

Extreme coastal flooding along the South African coast can be caused by the co-occurrence of waves, storm surges and tides. Importantly, in low-lying areas such as estuaries, the additional influence of river discharge can further exacerbate flooding intensity. The CASISAC* project aims to assess these compound flood impacts on a local scale by mod...

At the Algarve south coast overwash-induced floods are a frequent and destructive phenomenon. In this study return periods for overwash potentials are estimated for two beaches located at the southwest coast of the Algarve (Carvoeiro and Salema) based on runup calculations for the period 1995-2017 after applying two well validated empirical formula...