Coastal floods and climate change

Abstract

The Earth has been undergoing a global warming trend since the Little Ice Age being mostly assumed to be progressively increasing along the last and a half centuries. But this secular warming and the previous Little Ice Age cold wave had precedents linked with sea level and other climatic actions. Populations have been driven by climatic conditions, and processes of founding and expanding cities in coastal areas, on the other hand, have undergone great changes over time, under increasing conditions of vulnerability and even hazard. Therefore, the risk of flooding can be attenuated, but never eliminated. And question goes further due to concomitant phenomena, as subsidence and isostasy, which are exacerbated by the transformation of terrain and by settlements. This paper pretends a syncretistic discussion to face the problem in its most realistic way. It reflects on the “cold drop” phenomenon as a whole, on the generation of its rains and on the different natures and consequences of its floods, and compare with other cyclone events. And it approaches the ways in which the maritime weather and the consequent sea level govern floods on the lowest hydrographical basin.