Sea-level rise may not uniformly accelerate cliff erosion rates
Mark E. Dickson, Hironori Matsumoto, Wayne Stephenson, Zuzanna Swirad, C. F. Thompson, Adam P. Young
Abstract
Shadrick et al. 1 address the important question of rock coast cliff retreat rates in the face of sea level rise (SLR). Using cosmogenic radionuclide and topographic profile data combined with numerical modelling, they argue to have found a clear causal relationship between the Holocene rate of SLR and the rate of coastal cliff retreat at two coastal sites in Britain. Two of us (Matsumoto and Dickson 2 ) developed the rock coast erosion model used by Shadrick et al. and we caution that existing limitations in model process representations prevent accurate projections of hard rock cliff erosion over the next century. We highlight recent process-based studies of cliff erosion that indicate that local coastal response to SLR is likely to be highly variable over decadal time scales.