Rising Sea Level And Long Term Sustainability Of
Near-shore Islands Of The United Arab
Emirates: An Approach To Establishing Setback
Lines For Abu Dhabi
Author(s)
G. G. Garland
Abstract
In recent years an important infrastructural and human development focus for the
United Arab Emirates has been along the shoreline of its northern coast fronting
the Arabian Gulf. The Gulf itself is a large, warm, shallow semi-enclosed body
of water with complex oceanography and geomorphological history. Its southern
shores, including that of the northern UAE, are predominantly sandy. The value
of present infrastructure, especially in the capital city Abu Dhabi, constructed on
a number of natural and man-made islands, is enormous, but is already dwarfed
by future plans for the next twenty years. It is obvious that for the plans to be
both implementable and sustainable, the impacts of future sea level changes must
be taken into account.
Restricting sea level impact analysis to plotting the slow creep of steadily
rising sea level up the shore over several decades is naive and ignores other
significant changes in flood risks that accompany rising sea level. These include
enhanced coastal erosion, higher extreme tides and waves, elevated low pressure
surges and greater wave runup, all of which increase the likelihood of flood
occurrence and the degree and intensity of damage.
This paper reviews past and future sea level changes in the Arabian Gulf, and
demonstrates that, notwithstanding its separation from world oceans, the Gulf
sea level tends to respond to global forcing in the same way and within
approximately the same time frames as the global oceanic system. The study
concludes that from present evidence, the most likely sea level rise scenarios for
the Gulf by 2099 lie between 0.21 and 2m. Then, after review of many of the
Keywords
Arabian Gulf islands, Abu Dhabi, sea level rise, tide and storm surges, Shamal wind, setback lines
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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