Twelfth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

Indian coasts are often influenced by life-threatening water levels caused by tropical cyclones. In order to have better long-term planning for the coastal districts due to tropical cyclones, the extreme water levels for different climate change scenarios are important to compute. For this, finite-element mesh is generated with high-resolution near the coast to simulate maximum water elevations (MWE) as a response of the nonlinear storm surge interaction at the time of local high tide. Based on the historical cyclone data (1891-2016), the return periods are calculated using the values of pressure-drop of the cyclones for each maritime state along the Indian coasts. Synthetic tracks are also generated based on inverse distance weighted method using the inventory of cyclone tracks, ensuring that each coastal district is covered. Experiments are carried out for each return period with possible climate change scenarios by considering wind enhancement of 7% (moderate scenario) and of 11% (extreme scenario) over the normal (present) scenario. The simulations for MWEs is performed at every 10km along the Indian coast. The computed averaged extreme water levels of about 10m is simulated in the most northern part of the east coast and Gulf of Khambhat in the west coast of India. An average increase of about 20% and 30% in MWE are estimated in the moderate and extreme climate change scenarios respectively. The southern Indian peninsular region is seen as significantly affected from the extreme scenario.