Urban Coastal Flooding and Climate Change

Diez, J.J., Paz, R., Esteban, M.D., Lopez-Gutierrez, J.S. and Negro, V., 2011. Urban Coastal Flooding and Climate Change. Journal of Coastal Research, SI 64 (Proceedings of the 11th International Coastal Symposium), 205 – 209. Szczecin, Poland, ISSN 0749-0208 Coastal urban flooding is increasing, affecting mainly to new urban settlements but also to the traditional ones. This is due either to sea level and continental climatic factors. But also because population has increased at the same t ime being coastal areas selectively affected in old and new settlements, leading to need on flood resilience improvements The planet has been suffering a global warming change leading to sea level rise that is happening since the Little Ice Age although rising since 19 th century. It comes with other synergic changes in marine and littoral dynamics, like El Nino South Oscilation and cyclonic storms. But other relative sea level movements are interfering in each segment of the coast with a local or even a regional character, being the main problem to discern the factors affecting these vertical movements This paper affronts the problem of the coastal urban floods, analyzing their increasing and variability, discussing the rebounds and the subsidence, discerning them from the global change in the long term, and the influence of other sea level changes in the “short term”: meteorological phenomena (storm surge and set-up), wave set-up and other long waves, in order to allow a more accurate Flood Resilience measures.