News

A research paper presenting some of the key project results, as well as technical elements of the methodology developed under the project has been published in the international journal Regional Environmental Change and is available online under this link https://rdcu.be/Q1OY. The paper will be included in a Special issue with a focus on “1.5 °C and Small Island Developing States”, which is to inform the forthcoming IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees warming. For ease of reference, the abstract and keywords are set out below.

Monioudi, I.N., Asariotis, R., Becker, A. et al. Reg Environ Change (2018). Climate change impacts on critical international transportation assets of Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS): The case of Jamaica and Saint Lucia. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-018-1360-4

Abstract 

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 the coastal inundation forced by CV & C on 4 coastal international airports and 4 seaports in Jamaica and Saint Lucia which are critical facilitators of international connectivity and socioeconomic development. Impact assessments have been carried out under climatic conditions forced by a 1.5 °C Specific Warming Level (SWL) above pre-industrial levels, as well as for different emission scenarios and time periods in the 21st century. Disruptions and increasing costs due to e.g. more frequent exceedance of high temperature thresholds that could impede transport operations are predicted, even under the 1.5 °C SWL, advocated by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and reflected as an aspirational goal in the Paris Climate Agreement. Dynamic modelling of the coastal inundation under different return periods of projected extreme sea levels (ESLs) indicates that the examined airports and seaports will face increasing coastal inundation during the century. Inundation is projected for the airport runways of some of the examined international airports and most of the seaports, even from the 100-year extreme sea level under 1.5 °C SWL. In the absence of effective technical adaptation measures, both operational disruptions and coastal inundation are projected to increasingly affect all examined assets over the course of the century. 

Caribbean, Climate change, dynamic flood modelling, extreme sea levels, international transport, SIDS