Exploring Key Aspects of Sea Level Rise and their Implications: An Overview

TL;DR

This paper reviews the causes, regional variations, impacts, and adaptation strategies related to sea level rise, emphasizing the importance of tailored mitigation efforts, with a case study on the Arabian Gulf.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive overview of SLR factors, impacts, and mitigation approaches, including a specific case study on the Arabian Gulf region.

Findings

Regional factors cause uneven sea level rise.

SLR impacts affect biophysical, socioeconomic, and environmental aspects.

Assessment methods inform effective adaptation strategies.

Abstract

Sea Level Rise (SLR) is one of the most pressing challenges of climate change and has drawn noticeable research interest over the past few decades. Factors induced by global climate change such as temperature increase, have resulted in both direct and indirect changes in sea levels at different spatial scales. A number of climatic and non-climatic events drive the change in sea level and impose risk on coastal and low-lying areas. Nevertheless, changes in sea level are not uniformly distributed globally due to a number of regional factors such as wave actions, storm surge frequencies, and tectonic land movement. The high exposure to those factors increases the vulnerability of subjected areas to SLR impacts. The impacts of events induced by climate change and SLR are reflected in biophysical, socioeconomic, and environmental aspects. Different indicator-based and model-based approaches are used to assess coastal areas' vulnerabilities, response to impacts, and implementation of adaptation and mitigation measures. Various studies were made to project future SLR impacts and evaluate implemented protection and adaptation approaches to help policymakers plan effective adaptation and mitigation measures and reduce damage. This paper provides an overview of SLR and its key elements encompassing contributing factors, impacts, and mitigation and adaptation measures with a case study focus on the Arabian Gulf.