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Projections of multiple climate-related coastal hazards for the US Southeast Atlantic

Nature Climate Change volume 15, pages 101–109 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Faced with accelerating sea level rise and changing ocean storm conditions, coastal communities require comprehensive assessments of climate-driven hazard impacts to inform adaptation measures. Previous studies have focused on flooding but rarely on other climate-related coastal hazards, such as subsidence, beach erosion and groundwater. Here, we project societal exposure to multiple hazards along the Southeast Atlantic coast of the United States. Assuming 1 m of sea level rise, more than 70% of the coastal residents and US$1 trillion in property are in areas projected to experience shallow and emerging groundwater, 15 times higher than daily flooding. Storms increase flooding exposure by an order of magnitude over daily flooding, which could impact up to ~50% of all coastal residents and US$770 billion in property value. The loss of up to ~80% of present-day beaches and high subsidence rates that currently affect over 1 million residents will exacerbate flooding and groundwater hazard risks.

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Fig. 1: Study area.
Fig. 2: Coastal hazard exposure across the study area.
Fig. 3: Population exposure (based on 2020 US Census) across the Southeast Atlantic coast study area.
Fig. 4: Projected shoreline change.
Fig. 5: Projected beach loss.

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Data availability

The following datasets are available at https://doi.org/10.5066/P9W91314 for North and South Carolina, and https://doi.org/10.5066/P9BQQTCI for the remaining study area: projections of coastal flood hazards and flood potential, projections of coastal water depths, projected groundwater head, projected water table depths, projected groundwater emergence and shoaling, nearshore water level, tide and non-tidal residual hindcasts (1979–2016), nearshore water level, tide and non-tidal residual future projections (2016–2050), nearshore parametric wave setup hindcast data (1979–2019), nearshore parametric wave setup future projections (2020–2050), projections of shoreline change of current and future (2005–2100) sea level rise scenarios, satellite-derived shorelines, and vertical land motion rates for the years 2007 to 2020.

Code availability

The code for the coastal change model is available at https://doi.org/10.5066/P95T9188. All other codes are available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

Support for this research project was provided by the US Geological Survey’s Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program and the Additional Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief Act of 2019 (H.R. 2157) for work focused on North Carolina and South Carolina (P.L.B.). Flood hazard computing was performed at USGS Advanced Research Computing on the Denali Supercomputer94. Any use of trade, firm or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Patrick L. Barnard, Anita C. Engelstad, Li H. Erikson, Amy C. Foxgrover, Maya K. Hayden, Daniel J. Hoover, Andrea C. O’Neill, Kai A. Parker, Peter W. Swarzenski, Jennifer A. Thomas & Sean Vitousek

  2. Department of Geosciences, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

    Kevin M. Befus

  3. Earth Resources Observation & Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Sioux Falls, SD, USA

    Jeffrey J. Danielson

  4. Deltares, Delft, Netherlands

    Tim W. B. Leijnse

  5. Engineer Research and Development Center, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Vicksburg, MS, USA

    Chris Massey & Norberto C. Nadal-Caraballo

  6. Deltares USA, Silver Spring, MD, USA

    Robert McCall, Kees Nederhoff & Maarten van Ormondt

  7. Department of Geosciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Manoochehr Shirzaei & Leonard O. Ohenhen

  8. Water Research Laboratory, School of Environmental and Civil Engineering, UNSW Sydney, Manly Vale, New South Wales, Australia

    Kilian Vos

  9. Western Geographic Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Moffett Field, CA, USA

    Nathan J. Wood, Jeanne M. Jones & Jamie L. Jones

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  1. Patrick L. Barnard
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Contributions

P.L.B. conceived the study and led the paper writing. K.M.B. led the groundwater modelling. L.H.E., K.N. and K.A.P. led the flood modelling. A.C.F. and A.C.O. led hazard zone quality assurance and quality control, and internal review. C.M. led the tropical storm modelling. M.S. led the vertical land motion analyses. S.V. led the coastal change modelling. N.J.W. led the socioeconomic analyses. K.M.B., J.J.D., L.H.E., A.C.F., M.K.H., D.J.H., T.W.B.L., C.M., K.N., A.C.O., K.A.P., M.S., P.W.S., J.A.T., S.V. and N.J.W. participated in writing the paper. K.M.B., A.C.E., L.H.E., A.C.F., D.J.H., T.W.B.L., C.M., R.M., N.C.N.-C., K.N., A.C.O., K.A.P., L.O.O., J.A.T., M.v.O., K.V., J.M.J. and J.L.J. participated in developing the analyses.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Patrick L. Barnard.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Brett Sanders, Shengli Tao and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2.

Supplementary Table 1

Information on the CoSMoS framework of models and data used to support the coastal hazards presented in this study.

Supplementary Table 2

Flood exposure and groundwater exposure totals, summarized by states and combined, with median, maximum and minimum values.

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Barnard, P.L., Befus, K.M., Danielson, J.J. et al. Projections of multiple climate-related coastal hazards for the US Southeast Atlantic. Nat. Clim. Chang. 15, 101–109 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02180-2

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