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Regional Sea-Level Change along the Chilean

Coast in the 21st Century
Article in Journal of Coastal Research February 2016
Impact Factor: 0.98 DOI: 10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-15-00192.1

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Final Draft of the original manuscript

Regional Sea-Level Change along the Chilean

Coast in the 21st century
Frauke Albrecht and Gary Shaffer
in Journal of Coastal Research
DOI:10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-15-00192.1

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Regional Sea-Level Change along the Chilean

Coast in the 21st century
Frauke Albrecht* and Gary Shaffer**
* Center for Climate and Resilience Research
University of Concepcin
4030000 Concepcin, Chile
falbrechtg@gmail.com
** 1. Center for Advanced Studies in Arid Zones
1700000 La Serena, Chile
2. GAIA-Antarctica
Universidad de Magellanes
6200000 Punta Arenas, Chile
3. Niels Bohr Institute
University of Copenhagen,
2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
LRH: Albrecht and Shaffer
RRH: Sea-Level Change along the Chilean Coast

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ABSTRACT
Regional sea-level change for Chile is considered until the end of the 21st century for the RCP4.5
and RCP8.5 scenarios. The main components that contribute to sea-level change are analyzed and
summed to achieve a total estimate of sea-level change along the coast of Chile and in the Southeast
Pacific. Included are the steric/dynamic component, the contribution from land ice loss and the sealevel change due to the glacial isostatic adjustment. Regional fingerprints and global means are
combined to estimate sea-level change in this area. For the steric/dynamic component two different
estimates are considered. The results are compared to those found in the IPCC AR5 report. The
total mean sea-level rise along the coast lies between 34 cm and 52 cm for the RCP4.5 scenario and
between 46 cm and 74 cm for the RCP8.5 scenario, depending on the location and the
steric/dynamic component estimate considered. This component is the main contribution in each
scenario. All estimates show a modest, relatively constant decrease in sea-level rise along the coast
from north to south.
ADDITIONAL INDEX WORDS: sea-level contributions, CMIP5, ice loss, GIA.
INTRODUCTION
Many coastal areas in the world are densely populated and are therefore threatened by the
consequences of a possible sea-level rise or a change in the occurrence of floods and storm surges.
Approximately 10% of the world's population lives at an elevation of 10 m or less above sea-level
(Nicholls and Cazenave 2010). Moreover, coastal areas are often important for tourism and
agriculture. Reliable coastal protection is necessary for low-lying areas. The scientific community
has become more and more aware of the importance of sea-level rise. The Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) introduced an entire chapter on this topic in its fifth Assessment Report
(AR5). Analysis of past global mean sea-level have shown a rise of about 20 cm during the last
century (Bindoff et al., 2007) and future projections lie between 40 cm and 63 cm for 2081 2100
relative to 1986 - 2005, depending on the underlying climate scenario (Church et al., 2013).
Observed mean sea-level rise consists of different components. The two most important ones
are thermal expansion and land ice loss (Church et al., 2008; Church et al., 2013). Thermal
expansion refers to sea-level rise from ocean water expansion as ocean temperatures increase in
response to global warming. Land ice loss adds water to the ocean leading to sea-level rise. Rignot
et al. (2003) demonstrate the growing ice loss and its influence to sea-level change for the
Patagonian glaciers. However, sea-level change is not uniform over the globe, but varies regionally
due to several effects (e.g., Goennert et al., 2009). Thermal expansion is the global mean of
thermosteric effects, that are regionally different and land ice loss changes the global mass
distribution leading to local gravity changes and a non-uniform water distribution (Church et al.,
2008; Mitrovica et al., 2001). Changes in ocean salinity also lead to changes in the ocean water
density, which also effect ocean height (Cazenave and Llovel, 2010). This is the so called halosteric
effect, an effect that may contribute significantly to sea-level change on a regional scale but little to
the global mean (Church et al., 2013). Another factor that contributes to sea-level change is the
glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). During the last ice age about 20,000 years ago, large areas of the
Earth were covered with ice. This ice depressed the Earths crust changing the form of the ocean
basins. When the ice melted, the Earths crust rebounded toward its former position. GIA describes
this ongoing process, one that also depends on the region considered (Whitehouse, 2009). An
overview about the different contributions to sea-level change is e.g., given in Milne et al. (2009) or
Stammer et al. (2013).

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The IPCC AR5 presents two different approaches to project future sea-level. On the one hand, so
called process-based projections consider the sum of the projected components of sea-level change.
They are based on climate models that use the physics of the Earth system. On the other hand, the
so called semi-empirical approach estimates sea-level change using the relationship between past
tide gauge data and e.g., temperature to derive a simple model. The components that attribute to
sea-level change are not regarded separately, but sea-level is regarded as an integrated response of
the entire climate system (Church et al., 2013). Baker and McGowan (2014) present a third
approach. They use tide gauge and paleo sea-level data in order to detect past sea-level cycles. They
argue that these cycles may modulate current sea-level projections. They use a Lotka-Volterra
model to develop a climate model that describes a chaotic climate system containing cycles. This
model is designed to consider anthropogenic warming and natural variability. Opinions diverge on
whether such sea-level cycles exist or not (Baker and McGowan, 2014; Lewis et al., 2013).
From the discussion above it is clear that global mean sea-level change has only limited
applicability for specific regions. Regional mean sea-level analyses are therefore important and
essential for reliable coastal management. In this study the different sea-level contributions for the
Chilean coast and the Southeast Pacific are analyzed and summed to produce local estimates of total
sea-level change from the end of the 20th century until the end of the 21st century. Church et al.
(2013) also consider land water storage as another component for sea-level change. This factor is
not included here as its contribution to future sea-level change is poorly studied and generally small
compared to the other contributors (Church et al., 2013; Slangen et al., 2014). Chile is a special
case due to its extraordinary shape and position with a north-south coastal orientation that extends
for about 4,300 km between 17S and 56S, spanning different climate zones. Natural hazards like
earthquakes or tsunamis increase sea-level temporally and may lead to flooding. An increase in sealevel means a rise in initial water levels allowing flooding events to occur more easily. In general
land rises steeply along the Chile coast in contrast to other many of the world with flatter coastal
regions. Thus Chile has natural protection against flooding in many places. However, a number of
important cities lie at the coast and would be affected by sea-level rise. Until now, no detailed
analysis of sea-level projections for the Chile coast has been carried out and this study aims to fill
this important gap. In the following section, the data and the methods used in this work are
described. Next the results of the work are presented. In the first part of the results section, sea-level
change from the different components listed above are analyzed and in the second part the sum over
these components to produce projections of total sea-level change is considered.
METHODS
Sea-level change consists of different components the sum of which provides an estimate of total
sea-level change (Church et al., 2013 ; Slangen et al., 2012; Slangen et al., 2014). The components
and datasets used here are described in the following subsections. The time frame for calculating
future projections until the end of the 21st century is the same as in the IPCC AR5 (Church et al.,
2013), that is the mean of AD 2081 2100 with respect to the mean of AD 1986 2005.
Steric and Dynamic Sea-Level Change
Steric changes result from changes in the ocean temperature or salinity and thereby in density. By
conservation of mass this leads to ocean expansion or contraction and changes in sea surface height.
In the global mean the temperature effect is presently much larger than that of salinity, but
regionally the halosteric effect maybe important (Church et al., 2013). Dynamic sea-level change is
associated with changing ocean currents. Data for the steric and dynamic sea-level change consist
of two parts, the global mean rise and regional deviations from this mean. Both are individually
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calculated and then added to estimate the regional steric sea-level change. To estimate the regional
fingerprint of steric sea-level change until the end of the 21st century, projections from the Coupled
Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) have been used. These data are freely available in
the internet and can be downloaded on the website http://pcmdi9.llnl.gov/esgf-web-fe/. When the
data were downloaded (January 2014) a total of 32 climate models provided data for this variable.
However, the models have different resolutions along the coast. As this study focuses are on sealevel change along the coast of Chile only models that provided sufficiently good resolution were
considered. Models with at least 1x1.5 resolution were used. In addition, projections for all the
Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) scenarios are not available for all models (for more
details about the RCP scenarios see van Vuuren et al., 2010). Therefore this work concentrates on
the RCP4.5 and the RCP8.5 scenarios for which projections from 17 models are available with good
resolution along the coast. When several realizations of a model are available for a scenario, first
the mean over these realizations was computed and later the mean of the 17 models. Table 2 in the
Appendix gives an overview of the models and the number of runs used for each scenario. For these
models, historical and control runs were also downloaded for the analysis.
The data were pre-processed by interpolating all data onto 1 1 grids and then subtracting model
drift as quantified by the quadratic trend of the control runs (Sen Gupta et al., 2013; Slangen et al.,
2014; Yin, 2012). Then ensemble means of model runs available for each model were computed
over the time period 2081 2100 from the projections and the time period 1986 2005 for the
historical runs. As in Church et al. (2013) these means were subtracted to get the projected change
over the 21st century. Finally the multi-model means of these changes were computed (Slangen et
al., 2012; Slangen et al. 2014). As a second assessment the medians were considered in addition to
the means.
The CMIP5 database provides two different variables for estimating the global mean steric sea-level
change by the end of the 21st century, the global thermosteric and steric sea-levels. However, the
first variable is provided by more models. The rise considering both variables was considered using
the same calculation steps and time periods as for the regional fingerprints. The results for both
variables are very close, that is for the time period considered the thermosteric effect dominates
completely. It is also common in literature to use this variable (Slangen et al., 2012; Slangen et al.,
2014 ; Yin, 2012). For the global thermosteric sea-level change 24 models provide data (as of June
2014), however regional fingerprints were missing for three of these. Also not all of the 21 models
used in Church et al. (2013) were available. However, all the means that were calculated - over
different numbers of climate models - are very close and that all values are very close to the mean
and within the uncertainty range of the results in Church et al. (2013). Therefore the Church et al.
(2013) values were used in the following analysis: a mean rise of 0.19 m and the 95%-confidence
interval of 0.14 m to 0.23 m for the RCP4.5 scenario and 0.27 m with a confidence interval from
0.21 m to 0.33 m for the RCP8.5 scenario.
Sea-level Change due to Ice-Sheets and Glaciers
Sea-level changes from land ice loss are not spatially uniform, mainly due to gravitational effects.
An ice mass attracts the water and if it melts sea-level will drop close to it, but rise further away
(e.g., Milne et al., 2009 ; Mitrovica et al., 2001). As for steric and dynamic sea-level change, this
part consists of a global mean rise and a regional fingerprint. For the regional fingerprints of the
Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets two different datasets were considered. The first one is
from Milne et al. (2009) and the second from Slangen et al. (2014). The main difference between
these datasets is that Slangen et al. (2014) divided the contribution of the Greenland and West
Antarctic Ice Sheet into two components, the dynamic contribution, which describes events like
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calving, and the surface mass balance (SMB) contribution, which describes the difference between
accumulation and ablation. Milne et al. (2009) do not make this distinction. Slangen et al. (2014)
argue that the contributions respond differently to climate change. However, as shown in the next
section, the two approaches lead to similar results for the study region of this work. Slangen et al.
(2014) provide data for the sea-level changes resulting from glaciers as the regional distribution of
sea-level rise for the period 2081 - 2100 with respect to 1986 2005. The model used by Slangen et
al. (2014) for glacier mass loss is based on the volume-area approach (Bahr et al. 1997; Van de Wal
and Wild 2001). The models used for calculating the sea-level change due to changes in the
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are based on the sea-level equation, first introduced by Farrell
and Clark (1976). Since then the theory has been extended (Milne et al., 2009; Tamisiea et al.,
2003). Slangen et al. (2014) use an Earth model based on PREM from Dziewonski and Anderson
(1981). This model is elastic, compressible and radially stratified. All data were interpolated to 1
1 grid as above. For the global component the values given by Church et al. (2013) are adopted
(Table 1). Regional sea-level rise due to land-ice melting is calculated by scaling regional
fingerprints with global means for each component and summing over the different components.
Glacial Isostatic Adjustment
GIA describes the movement of the Earth in response to land ice loss since the last glacial
maximum about 20,000 years ago. Ice depressed the Earth crust and as ice was removed the crust
rebounded toward its former position, a process that is still going on (Whitehouse, 2009). The GIA
data used here was taken from Peltier (2004). It is freely available and can be downloaded at
http://www.psmsl.org/train_and_info/geo signals/gia/peltier/index.php. The data give the presentday rate-of-change of relative sea-level and crustal uplift as predicted by a GIA model. The ice
model used is ICE-5G v1.3 and the Earth model is VM2 with a 90km thick lithosphere. Again the
grids were converted to 1 1 for further calculations. The century time scale considered here is
short compared to GIA time scales such that the crustal displacement rates can be assumed to be
constant in time (Slangen et al., 2014).
RESULTS
In this section sea-level rise for the Chilean coast and the Southeast Pacific is presented. First sealevel change due to the different components is considered and later the total sea-level change as the
sum of these components. As this work aims to investigate sea-level change close to the coast, this
will be considered separately.
Sea-Level Change Components
As explained earlier sea-level change consists of different components. In the following subsections
the sea-level change due to the individual components along the Chile coast and the Southeast
Pacific for the end of the 21st century will be analyzed.
Steric and Dynamic Sea-Level Change
Figure 1 shows the multi-model mean sea-level change of the RCP4.5 and the RCP8.5 scenarios for
the sum of steric and dynamic component and the time period 2081 2100 with respect to 1986
2005. Both scenarios show the same pattern with higher values for the RCP8.5 scenario. The
patterns and the range agree with earlier works (Church et al., 2013 ; Yin, 2012). Differences are
probably due to the use of different models and/or time periods. This study focuses on sea-level
change along the Chile coast, defined here by the gridpoints marked by crosses in Figure 2. These
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gridpoints are considered as a sufficient estimate for the coast. Several of the models used in this
study have a higher resolution along the coast than the multi-model mean. An analysis of these
models shows that they in general exhibit very little change in the gridpoints that lie closer to the
coast than the ones in Figure 2. The same holds for the contributions considered in the following
subsections. This component of sea-level change along the coast is shown in Figure 3 for both
scenarios. All different models are shown by the gray lines and the multi-model mean by the thick
colored line. The x-axis increases from north to south and the locations of some cities are included
for orientation. The HadGEM-ES model exhibits high values along the coast and in the entire
Southeast Pacific region when compared to all other models (not shown). The multi-model means
of both scenarios only vary slightly along the coast and exhibit a sea-level rise slightly less than 10
cm and about 15 cm for the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively.
Standard errors of the multi-model means are not presented since such a computation would assume
the 17 climate models to be a random sample. The underlying statistical population would consist of
all possible projections for sea-level change. However, this population is not well-defined and
therefore the 17 model ensemble cannot be regarded as a random sample (von Storch and Zwiers,
2013). Instead, box plots of the results were calculated whereby each box refers to one gridpoint
and shows the distribution of the climate models for this point (Figure 4). Here the median is shown
instead of the arithmetic mean. The boxes refer to the 25/75-percentiles and the dashed lines mark
the entire range of the distribution. The crosses are values that are considered as outliers with values
lower/higher than 1.5 times the 25/75-percentile interval. In both scenarios, values for the medians
are lower than those for the arithmetic means (compare to Figure 3). Results for the RCP4.5
scenario shows an outlier above (HadGEM2-ES model) and one below (CNRM-CM5 model).
Medians lie closer to the 25-percentile than to the 75-percentile demonstrating that models with
results higher than the medians are more spread out than those with results lower than the medians.
As for arithmetic means, the medians vary little along the coast. Results for the RCP8.5 scenario
shows one outlier above all the other results (HadGEM2-ES model). However, there are more
outliers at different gridpoints in this scenario. As in the RCP4.5 scenario the median values are
closer to the 25-percentile than to the 75-percentile and they are quite constant along the coast. Note
that median values for the two scenarios are very similar but the range of the 25/75-percentiles is
greater for the RCP8.5 scenario. However, the high values of the upper bound of these percentiles
derive from only a few models.
Land-Ice Contribution
Figure 5 shows the distribution in the study area of the ratio of local sea-level change to global
mean sea-level change due to changes in Greenland and West Antarctic ice volume (data from
Milne et al., 2009). The ice sheet data from Slangen et al. (2014) are only shown along the coast
(Figure 6). There is little difference between the surface mass balance (SMB) and the dynamic
contribution for the Greenland ice sheet. However, for the West Antarctic ice sheet, the dynamic
contribution greatly exceeds that from SMB. The sea-level change ratio from glacier ice loss is also
shown in Figure 5 (data from Slangen et. al., 2014). Figure 6 shows all different contributions along
the coast for both datasets. All plots demonstrate that the West Antarctic contribution decreases
towards the south. This is due to the gravitational effect described above. This effect is very
prominent in the south of Chile due to the proximity of Antarctica.
Glacial Isostatic Adjustment
Figure 7 shows the distribution of expected sea-level change in the study area due to GIA. As
demonstrated in the figure on the right, this contribution is quite small along the coast becoming
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more negative toward the south. This latter feature reflects ongoing rebound from the melting of the
Patagonian ice sheet after the last glaciation.
Total Sea-Level Change
Figure 8 shows the different components of sea-level change along the coast of Chile considered
above. For the regional fingerprints of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets the data from
Milne et al. (2009) have been used. Total sea-level change is the sum of all these components. For
the steric/dynamic component the regional fingerprint and the global means are added. For the land
ice contributions the fingerprints are multiplied by global means. Finally, the GIA contribution is
added to these two components. The above can be expressed in the following equation:
SL_tot = SD_fp + S_gl + GL_fp GL_gl + A _fp A_gl + Gl_fp Gl_gl + GIA,
with:
SL_tot ... total sea-level change,
SD_fp fingerprint of the steric and dynamic contribution,
S_gl global steric contribution,
GL_fp fingerprint of the glacier contribution,
GL_gl global glacier contribution,
A _fp fingerprint of the West Antarctic contribution,
A_gl global West Antarctic contribution,
Gl_fp fingerprint of the Greenland contribution,
Gl_gl global Greenland contribution
GIA GIA contribution.
For the global components the values given by Church et al. (2013) are used as explained in the
previous section. Two different estimates for the steric and dynamic component are shown using
two different methods to applied to climate model output as described previously. In the first
estimate the multi-model mean is calculated as the arithmetic mean of all model projections as it is
common in the literature (Church et al., 2013; Slangen et al., 2012; Slangen et al., 2014). The
second estimate is calculated as the median of the projections. As explained earlier the arithmetic
mean is strongly influenced by results from a few models showing anomalously high values
compared to the results from the other models. Therefore the median might be a better way to
estimate the mean change in this case.
Figure 8 shows that for both scenarios the steric and dynamic component make the greatest
contribution of all the sea-level components and that the difference between the two estimates of
this component is relatively large, especially for the RCP8.5 scenario. This demonstrates the
sensitivity of the results to the climate models considered. Figure 9 shows the Southeast Pacific
distribution of total sea-level change when using the arithmetic mean of the steric and dynamic
component. The fingerprints of the glaciers have been taken from Slangen et al. (2014) and of
Greenland and West Antarctica have been taken from Milne et al. (2009). A comparison with the
same calculations but with ice sheet fingerprints from Slangen et al. (2014) show only minor
differences in sea-level change with regard to the Greenland Ice Sheet. However, use of the Slangen
et al. (2014) fingerprints for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet yield lower values towards the south (not
shown but consistent with the results of Figure 6). As expected the RCP8.5 experiment in general
exhibits higher values than the RCP4.5 scenario but the pattern of sea-level change is very similar
for both scenarios.

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Figure 10 shows the total sea-level change along the Chile coast. For comparison, the IPCC AR5
result (Church et al., 2013) is plotted as well as the result when the median instead of the arithmetic
mean is used. The Church et al. (2013) data were downloaded from www.zmaw.de. The
components from IPCC AR5 estimate are the same as considered here but with the addition of land
water storage, which was subtracted here for comparison with the results of this study. Also here,
the higher values for the RCP8.5 scenario are evident. However, as already seen above, there is a
large difference between the estimates using the arithmetic mean and the median of the climate
model projections for the steric and dynamic component. For both scenarios the estimate using the
median shows values similar to the IPCC AR5 results while the arithmetic mean estimate is above
both of the other two estimates by about 7-10 and 15-20 cm for the RCP4.5 and 8.5 scenarios,
respectively. The differences between the IPCC AR5 estimates and the arithmetic mean estimate
are probably due to different model projections considered in the calculations. All results show a
relatively constant change of sea-level along the coast with slightly higher rise in the north than in
the south of Chile. This is mainly due to the closeness to Antarctica in the south. For the RCP4.5
scenario the total rise lies between 35 and 46 cm for the IPCC AR5 results, between 34 and 47 cm
for the estimate using the median and between 40 and 52 cm for the estimate using the arithmetic
mean. For the RCP8.5 scenario, the total rise lies between 46 and 60 cm for the IPCC AR5 results,
between 48 and 61 cm for the estimate using the median and between 61 and 72 cm for the estimate
using the arithmetic mean. As explained in the section Steric and Dynamic Sea-Level Change the
uncertainty range was intentionally not computed, because the underlying distribution of climate
models cannot be regarded as a random sample. However, the reader should be aware that all the
values given are mean estimations within an uncertainty range. These results emphasize both the
sensitivity to climate models considered and to the method used to calculate the means.
DISCUSSION
In this study sea-level rise along the coast of Chile and the Southeast Pacific until the end of the
21st century has been estimated. The main contributors to this rise steric and dynamic sea-level
change, sea-level rise due to land ice loss and sea-level change due to the GIA have been
compiled for this region and added up to provide an estimate of total sea-level change. This is a
very common method in the literature and has been applied to different regions in the world. For
example, Katsman et al. (2011) used this method to estimate a high-end scenario for the
Netherlands until the end of the 21st century. Simpson et al. (2014) projected regional sea-level for
Norway by adding up its components and Johansson et al. (2012) did the same for Finland.
Grinsted et al. (2015) estimated a worst case scenario for sea-level rise in northern Europe
considering the sum of the major contributions of sea-level. An alternative approach is presented in
Tebaldi et al. (2012). The authors projected sea-level rise at 11 tide gauge locations along
California, Oregon, and Washington. They estimated global sea-level rise by applying a semiempirical method and use 50 years of tide gauge records to estimate local rates and their deviations
from global sea-level rise caused by local effects. For the same region the Committee on Sea-Level
Rise in California, Oregon, and Washington (2012) summed up the estimated single contributions
for a regional projection, as it has been done here. These authors additionally included different
sources of land movements as tectonics and sediment compaction into their estimate in addition to
GIA.
For the steric and dynamic contribution an ensemble of 17 CMIP5 models has been used. It is
common in literature to use the multi-model mean of such an ensemble (Church et al., 2013;
Slangen et al. 2012; Slangen et al. 2014). However, this work shows that the simple arithmetic
mean might not be the best estimate. In the ensemble used in this study very few very high model
results greatly influenced the arithmetic mean. Therefore as an alternative it is suggested that the
9

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median of the models be used as an approximation of the mean change of the model ensemble.
Two different climate scenarios are considered, the RCP4.5 and the RCP8.5 scenario. As expected
the RCP8.5 yields to a higher rise of sea-level. In both scenarios the main contributor is the steric
and dynamic component, while the GIA contribution of sea-level change seems to be minor.
However, other tectonic influences not included in this study may contribute to sea-level
change. Along the much of the Chilean coast, the Nazca plate moves towards the South American
plate. The higher density of the Nazca plate leads to subduction below the South American plate.
This forces land rise at the coast (Oncken et al., 2006), implying a fall in relative sea-level and a
reduction in sea-level rise calculated here. Quantification of this process along the Chile coast
would be important but much of this rise may occur during earthquakes that are not predictable and
deform the coast in non-uniform ways. Sea-level rise from land ice loss was a significant
component and one that will likely be revised in the future as improved models take better into
consideration to role of ocean-ice shelf interactions on the dynamic response of the Greenland and
West Antarctic ice sheets (Prichard et al., 2012). All estimates show little variance along the coast,
with slightly higher values in the north than in the south. This can be explained by the proximity of
southern Chile to Antarctica. The sea-level rise estimates of this coast for the coast of Chile are
similar to the IPCC AR5 global mean estimates (Church et al., 2013) when the median of climate
models projections for the steric and dynamic contribution is used. However, the estimates using the
arithmetic mean give significantly higher values.
CONCLUSIONS
The results of the above analysis confirm the results of earlier work (e.g., Church et al., 2013; Yin,
2012) on the pattern and height of sea-level change along the coast of Chile and in the Southeast
Pacific until the end of the 21st century. The most important contribution to sea-level change derives
from steric/dynamic effects. However, also an important dependence of the results on the subset of
the models used in the analysis and on the method used to calculate the mean is demonstrated.
Figure 6 shows the strong influence of the West Antarctic Ice sheet in this area, leading to lower
sea-level rise in the north. The results of this study can be used to estimate which locations along
the Chile coast are vulnerable to sea-level rise. When sea-level rises the water level bases are
higher, thus the threshold for extreme sea-level is easier exceeded. That is, natural hazards like
storm surges lead more easily to extensive to flooding. The coast of Chile is in general not low
lying and therefore the country is not as affected by sea-level rise as other regions in the world.
However, several important cities and tourist regions lie near sea-level and are distributed all along
the Chilean coast. Some such cities are Iquique (20.21S, 70.15W), Antofagasta (23.65S,
70.4W), La Serena (29.91S, 71.25W),Via del Mar (33.03S, 71.54W), Valparaiso (33.05S,
71.62W), Talcahuano (36.72S, 73.12W), Valdivia (39.83S, 73.22W), Puerto Montt (41.47S,
72.94W) and Punta Arenas (53.15S, 70.92W). A detailed map of the altitudes along the coast
would help to analyze the vulnerability for the different locations. Unfortunately, such a map was
not available for this study.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programmes Working Group on Coupled Modelling,
which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups (listed in Table 2 of this
paper) for producing and making available their model output. The U.S. Department of Energys
Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support for
CMIP and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization
for Earth System Science Portals. This work was funded by Conicyt/FONDAP/15110009.
10

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APPENDIX
For the analysis of the steric and dynamic sea-level change data of 17 climate models of the CMIP5
database have been analyzed. In this section a detailed overview of the models used in this study is
shown in Table 2.
List of Tables:
Table 1: Global mean values for the ice sheet contributions from the IPCC AR5 (Church et al.,
2013) for the period 2081 2100 with respect to 1986 2005.

RCP4.5

RCP8.5
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622
623
624

Antarctic Ice Sheet

(rapid dynamics)

0.07m

[0.01m to 0.16m]

0.07m

[0.01m to 0.16m]

Antarctic Ice Sheet

(SMB)

0.02m

[0.05m to 0.01m] 0.04m

[0.07m to 0.01m]

Greenland Ice Sheet

(rapid dynamics)

0.04m

[0.01m to 0.06m]

0.05m

[0.02m to 0.07m]

Greenland Ice Sheet

(SMB)

0.04m

[0.01m to 0.09m]

0.07m

[0.03m to 0.16m]

Glaciers

0.12m

[0.06m to 0.19m]

0.16m

[0.09m to 0.23m]

Greenland Ice Sheet

(total)

0.08m

[0.04m to 0.13m]

0.12m

[0.07m to 0.21m]

Antarctic Ice Sheet

(total)

0.05m

[0.04m to 0.13m]

0.04m

[0.06m to 0.12m]

Table 2: CMIP5 model projections used to estimate the steric and dynamic contribution to sea-level
change.

Model name

instiution

nr. of runs
nr. of runs
(proj. RCP4.5) (proj. RCP8.5)

nr. of runs
(hist. runs)

nr. of runs
(contr. runs)

ACCESS1.0

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial

Research Organization (CSIRO) and
Bureau Meteorology (BOM), Australia

ACCESS1.3

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial

Research Organization (CSIRO) and
Bureau Meteorology (BOM), Australia

BCC-CSM1.1

Beijing Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration

BCC-CSM1.1-m

Beijing Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration

CCSM4

National Center for Atmospheric Research

CESM1-BGC

Community Earth System Model Contributors

CESM1-WACCM

Community Earth System Model Contributors

CNRM-CM5

Centre National de Recherches Meteorologiques/

1
Centre Europeen de Recherche et Formation Avancee en Calcul
Scientifique

10

GFDL-ESM2G

NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory

GISS-E2-R

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

GISS-E2-R-CC

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

HadGEM2-CC

Met Office Hadley Centre

HadGEM2-ES

Met Office Hadley Centre (additional HadGEM2-ES

realizations contributed
by Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais)

MIROC5

Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute

(The University of Tokyo),
National Institute for Environmental Studies,
and Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science
and Technology

MPI-ESM-LR

Max-Planck-Institut fuer Meteorologie

(Max Planck Institute for Meteorology)

MRI-CGCM3

Meteorological Research Institute

14

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628
629
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633
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637
638
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644
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646
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648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673

Norwegian Climate Centre

List of Figures:

Figure 1: The sum of steric and dynamic sea level change shown by the CMIP5 models for the
period 2081 2100 with respect to 1986 2005. The left plot shows the RCP 4.5 scenario and the
right plot the RCP 8.5 scenario for the multi-model mean of 17 climate models.

Figure 2: The gridpoints that are used along the coast are shown with crosses. Also shown are
several cities along the coast with their nearest gridpoints marked in red.

15

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706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723

Figure 3: The sum of steric and dynamic sea level change along the coast of Chile for the time
period AD 2081 2100 with respect to AD 1986 2005. Shown are results from 17 climate models
for the RCP 4.5 (left) and RCP 8.5 (right) scenarios, shown as individual results (gray curves) and
multi-model means (colored curves) The vertical lines mark the positions of some coastal cities.

Figure 4: The sum of steric and dynamic sea level change along the coast of Chile for the time
period 2081 2100 with respect to 1986 2005. The left hand side shows results for the RCP 4.5
scenario and the right hand side for the RCP 8.5. The data used is the same as in Fig. 3 (17 climate
models). The bold blue line shows the median of the distribution, the boxes show 25-/75-percentiles
and the dashed lines show the entire range of the distribution. Results that have lower/higher values
than 1.5 times the 25-/75-percentile interval are regarded as outliers and are plotted as crosses. The
vertical lines mark the positions of some coastal cities.

16

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727
728
729
730
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732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759

Figure 5: Ratio of local to global mean values of sea level change due to ice loss from Greenland
(left) and West Antarctica (center; data from Milne et al.,2009) and due to ice loss of glaciers from
(right, data from Slangen et al., 2014). Note that the color scales of the plots differ.

Figure 6: The ratio of local to global mean sea level change along the coast of Chile due to ice loss
from Greenland and West Antarctica (left; data from Milne et al., 2009). The ratio of local to global
mean sea level change along the coast of Chile due to ice loss from Greenland, West Antarctica and
glaciers (right; data from Slangen et al., 2014). The Greenland and the West Antarctic contributions
are divided into surface mass balance (smb) and dynamic (dyn) parts. The vertical lines mark the
positions of some coastal cities.

17

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793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809

Figure 7: Sea level change due to the GIA. The right hand site shows sea level change along the
coast of Chile. The vertical lines in the plots refer to several cities along the coast.

Figure 8: The different components of sea level change along the coast of Chile for the RCP4.5
(left) and the RCP8.5 (right) scenario. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet components are from
Milne et al (2009), the glacier contribution is from Slangen et al. (2014) and the GIA contribution is
from Peltier (2004). For the steric and dynamic component the arithmetic mean and the median of
17 climate models are shown.

18

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Figure 9: Sea level change for the period 2081 2100 with respect to 1986 2005 for the RCP4.5
(left) and the RCP8.5 (right) scenario. The plots show the sum of the steric and dynamic
component, the contribution from land-ice masses and the contribution from the GIA. The steric
and dynamic fingerprint is calculated from 17 CMIP5 climate models. The fingerprint of the
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet is from Milne et al. (2009), the glacier contribution from Slangen
et al. (2014) and the contribution of the GIA is from Peltier (2004).

Figure 10: Total sea level rise along the coast of Chile for the RCP4.5 and the RCP8.5 scenario.
Shown the results from the IPCC AR5 (Church et al., 2013) and our two estimates that use 1. the
arithmetic mean. and 2. the median to calculate the steric and dynamic component using projections
from 17 climate models.

19