Numerical modelling of pan-arctic erosion using globally-available forcing data

• Main Authors: Rolph, Rebecca, Lantuit, Hugues, Overduin, Pier Paul, Langer, Moritz
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2021
• Subjects: Arctic; Climate change; Ice; permafrost; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/55366/; https://www.agu.org/Fall-Meeting; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.520deeff-cd80-4fb7-a76a-a3d9fb28358c

As air temperatures rise and sea ice cover declines in the Arctic, permafrost coastal cliffs thaw more rapidly and wave energy rises. Thus, as the open water season continues to lengthen, climate change triggers a large part of the Arctic shoreline to become increasingly vulnerable to erosion. Arctic erosion supplies nutrient-laden and carbon-rich sediment into nearshore ecosystems. A retreating coastline also has consequences for residential, cultural, and industrial infrastructure. Despite its importance, erosion is currently neglected in global climate models, and existing physics-based numerical models of Arctic shoreline erosion are too complex and regionally-focused to be applied on a pan-Arctic scale. Here, we apply our simplified numerical erosion model, ArcticBeach v1.0, to the entire Arctic coastline. ArcticBeach v1.0 has previously been shown to simulate retreat rates at two sites that differ substantially in their main mechanisms of retreat (sub-aerial erosion/thaw slumping versus notch/block erosion). The model uses heat and sediment volume balances in order to predict horizontal cliff retreat and vertical erosion of a fronting beach. It contains an erosion module that uses empirical equations to estimate cross-shore sediment transport, coupled to a storm surge module forced by wind. We present Arctic maps of regional variation in trends in 2-meter air temperature, sea ice concentration, and wind speed.