Recent Developments in Sea-Level Rise and Its Related Geological Disasters Mitigation: A Review
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript "Recent developments in sea-level rise and its related geological disasters mitigation: a review" by Dong et al., is a well organized manuscript that resume the possible effect for the future of the sea level rise.
In my opinion this review could be interesting even if it does not bring any new data, on the contrary, it is based on outdated references and does not describe for present and future one of the components that contributed for the sea level rise: the vertical movements due to glacio hydro isostasy (or GIA, glacial isostatic adjustement)
Abstrac
"Sea-level rise is a result of many climate-related and human-related factors". Not true. Authors forget to add the isostatic and tectonic vertical movements that must be also quoted on the abstract : are geological movement, not related to climate or human, that in some world coastal areas could be bigger than ice melting (at Venice in Italy), or on the near field bulge areas as North Sea where the GIA uplifted some deposit aged 10.000 yeras cal BP at 200 m, and the sea flooding risk in theese areas should be less than other.
Introduction
it is completly lacking any reference to IPCC results that (AR5, AR6) that include the work of hundreds of researchers from around the world.
arrow 102, please quote the tectonic subsidence as one important component of relative sea level rise. Some references for Venice, GIA, coastal plain sea flooding and relative sea level rise are below.
arrow 255, please do not quote IPCC 2013 but AR6 2021.
arrow 262, " Many projections of sea-level rise are at the global scale; however, the factors that contribute to sea-level rise vary in different regions. For example, the height of sea level rise in the North Atlantic is about 20% higher than that in subtropical and equatorial regions when considering some regional factors (Slangen et al. 2014). In this case, different countries are more interested in the sea-level rise in their own vicinities (Tursina et al. 2017, 265 Ritphring et al. 2018, Feng et al. 2019, Habel et al. 2020, Sharaan et al. 2020). On the basis of global sea level rise forecast data and local sea level data, the maximum possible sea level rise of different coastal cities in the future should be carefully determined, and then effective prevention and control measures should be taken based on this value to mitigate various disasters caused by sea rise". This sentence is incomprehensible and incomplete, with outdated references. Please remember and better explain that relative sea level rise is the sum of ice melting, thermal expansion of the oceans, vertical tectonic movements and glacio-hydro isostasy plus anthropic subsidence. All that is well explained in many papers (see my advises in references below).
arrow 270, "Even if it is difficult to effectively predict the specific value of future sea level rise," Not true. The IPCC report AR6 (2021) is very precise there is a tab (on Fox-Kemper et al., 2021) in order to calculate for thousands of sites in all the world, the sum of movements (projections for 2100 ice melting plus geological vertical movements).
Arrow 311, Future research direction. In this chapter Authors should indicate, as one of the most important actions to be taken: the use of the flood maps (published in many coastal areas around the world) that adding all the local components of relative sea level rise are able to draw up the expected coastline within the area in 2100.
REFERENCES
Anzidei, M.; Lambeck, K.; Antonioli, F.; Furlani, S.; Mastronuzzi, G.; Serpelloni, E.; Vannucci, G. Coastal structure, sea-level changes and vertical motion of the land in the Mediterranean. Geological Society, London, Special Publications 2014, 388, 453–479, doi:10.1144/SP388.20.
Antonioli F, De Falco G, Lo Presti V, Moretti L, Scardino G, Anzidei M, Bonaldo D, Carniel S, Leoni G, Furlani S, MarsicoA,Petitta M, Randazzo G, Scicchitano G, Mastronuzzi G. (2020) Relative Sea-Level Rise and Potential Submersion Risk for 2100 on 16 Coastal Plains of the Mediterranean Sea. Water 12(8) 2173. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/12/8/2173
Fox-Kemper, B., H. T. Hewitt, C. Xiao, G. Aðalgeirsdóttir, S. S. Drijfhout, T. L. Edwards, N. R. Golledge, M. Hemer, R. E. Kopp, G. Krinner, A. Mix, D. Notz, S. Nowicki, I. S. Nurhati, L. Ruiz, J-B. Sallée, A. B. A. Slangen, Y. Yu, 2021, Ocean, Cryosphere and Sea Level Change. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. A contribution of Working Group of sea level to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Lambeck K, Antonioli F, Anzidei M, Ferranti L, Leoni G, Scicchitano G, Silenzi S (2011) Sea-level change along Italian coast during Holocene and a projection for the future. Quaternary International, 232, 250-257.
IPCC, 2019: Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, E. Calvo Buendia, V. Masson-Delmotte, H.-O. Pörtner, D. C. Roberts, P. Zhai, R. Slade, S. Connors, R. van Diemen, M. Ferrat, E. Haughey, S. Luz, S. Neogi, M. Pathak, J. Petzold, J. Portugal Pereira, P. Vyas, E. Huntley, K. Kissick, M. Belkacemi, J. Malley, (eds.)]. 2019
IPCC 2021 Oppenheimer M, Glavovic BC, Hinkel J, van de Wal R, Magnan AK, Abd-Elgawad A, CaiR, Cifuentes-Jara M, DeConto RM, Ghosh T, Hay J, Isla F, Marzeion B, Meyssignac B and Sebesvari Z(2019) Sea-level Rise and Implications for Low-Lying Islands, Coasts and Communities. In: IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate [Pörtner HO, Roberts DC, Masson-Delmotte V, Zhai P, Tignor M, Poloczanska E, Mintenbeck K, Alegría A, Nicolai M, Okem A, Petzold J, RamaB, WeyerNM (eds.)].
Marsico A., Lisco S., Lo Presti V., Antonioli F., Amorosi A., Anzidei M., Deiana G., De Falco G., Fontana A., Fontolan G.,Moretti M.,Orrú P.E., Serpelloni E., Sannino G.M., Vecchio A., Mastronuzzi G., 2017. Flooding scenario for four Italian coastal plains using three relative sea level rise models Journal of Maps 13 (2), 961-967.
Zanchettin D., Bruni S., Raicich F., Piero Lionello, Adloff F., Androsov A., Antonioli F., Vincenzo Artale , Eugenio Carminati, Christian Ferrarin, Vera Fofonova , Robert J. Nicholls, Sara Rubinetti , Angelo Rubino , Gianmaria Sannino , Giorgio Spada, Rémi Thiéblemont, Michael Tsimplis, Georg Umgiesser, Stefano Vignudelli, Guy Wöppelmann, Susanna Zerbini, 2020. Sea-level rise in Venice: historic and future trends. Natural Hazards and Earth Sistem. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2020-351.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Reviewing the manuscript “Recent development in sea-level rise and its related geological disasters mitigation: a review" (jmse-1519282) by Dong et al. submitted to Journal of Marine Science and Engineering.
This article concerning sea level rise, why it happens, its risk and some ideas about what we can do. I find the manuscript important because sea level rise is a very important phenomenon affecting wide aspects of human life worldwide. The description about the factor contributing to sea level rise was good. Also, reviewing the risk due to the sea level rise was very interesting.
The article gives a lot of information. However, there was one part that was not clear. Thus, I think that the article should be accepted with minor revision. My remarks are listed below:
Major remark
Section 5 was not clear to me from line 320 till the end of the section (line 362). I think that this part of the manuscript is very important so you should improve it.
General remarks
- Lines 59-60 – why “and..river” in Iatlic ?
- Lines 61-61 – the sentence is not clear – it feels that this sentence repeat pervious sentence and why you begin the sentence with “In addition” (other human-related factors were mentioned before)?
- Line 85 – I don’t think it is a good idea to begin sentence with “and”.
- In line 87 you write that ice sheet melt contributed 15% of the sea level rise and in line 95 you write that it contributed 50%. You need to explain (and elaborate) why there are two different numbers for the same issue.
- Lines 103-104 – you write that irrigation and deforestation are connected to sea level rise, but it is not clear how. Please elaborate this subject.
- I looked forward reading about the connection between see level rise and oil mining in section 2.2, but there was no mention of this. Why?
- Lines 134-135 - I found this sentence not clear, especially as a summarization of the paragraph.
- In line 157-158 – you write that sea level rise can lead to increase and decrease the area of wetlands but later on you elaborate only about decrease of area. What about increase?
- I was curious to know from section 3.3 what will happen to the wetland – it will become lagoons, salt marshes, part of the sea...?
- In line 181 you mentioned that sea level has risen 120 meters, so the future rise of 1-2 meters seems negligible. Please elaborate this subject.
- Line 208 – the opening sentence of the paragraph is not good – please rewrite it.
- The part begins in line 320 does not feel connected to previous paragraph.
- You explain what is PDF, but it displayed in Fig.4. Therefore, the explanation of Fig.4 should be shown before.
- I failed to understand Fig.4 - the graph itself and most importantly the text.
- In the end of the conclusion you mentioned that “...urban managers .. predict the degree of disasters..”. This seems interesting and probably connected to the method you suggested in Fig.4, but I did not understand this – prbably because I did not understand the method you talked about (see the two remarks above). Make sure after you rewrite the section concerning the method that this part in the conclusion will be also clear to the readers
- Fig. 2 – ALA is missing in the caption (what does ALA mean?).
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Please see my comments attached.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The paper presents a review on an important and sounding topic, that fits the journal's audience and has a profound impact on socio-economic aspects of general society but also in coastal regions, economies and populations in particular. This review should somehow combine the information available with more tables and graphical elements that help the reader to derive the important numbers, percentages and overall trends that are gathered in the text. For example, more tables like Table 1 and figures like 1 and 2 need to be included. Although the paper does not present any novel information, as a review it does compile useful information and a broad overview of sea-level-rise research, hence being useful for the JMSE audience and researchers. The discussion on mitigation measures and their impact in terms of cost-benefit and so on require improvement. Nevertheless, provided that the comments below are addressed, I believe the review is publishable. Congratulations on the interesting article.
At first look both the abstract the introduction provide a notion that the paper is going to address a set of generalities about sea-level rise. However, it seems that the key contribution of the paper is to provide a "quantitative disaster assessment concept based on resilience is introduced into the coastal urban system". I believe this should be better highlighted while also making it clear in the introduction what is the novelty provided by this research in comparison to similar ones. Also abstract could also provide a brief notion on the outcome results of this paper.
Refs - use the journal's numbered refs instead of author, year style
L23 Introduction
L29 - I recommend that a note on the vulnerability of coastal populations to natural hazards is made, for example, including the following ref DOI: 10.2495/RISK060241
L44 - for JMSE audience I believe it would be important to include notes and refs on how the sea-level rise may lead to uncertainty in met-ocean variables (wave heights, etc...) for prediction models, e.g. DOI 10.1680/jmaen.2019.20 ; design and operation of many rising fields of marine engineering, e.g. offshore structures as the ones in DOI: 10.1680/jmaen.2019.172.4.118 or DOI: 10.1680/jmaen.2019.172.3.71 ; or in marine energy investments e.g. DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2019.10.014 among many others.
L46-51 - format
L96-99 - yes observation is important, but just observing is not enough to counteract ongoing sea-level rise. Measures will be needed, this should be addressed with better detail. What have the European Union, the G7, the UN been doing lately to promote the mitigation of sea-level rise arising from the ice sheets and glacier melt? It would be important to elaborate on this for the sake of also providing a pragmatic perspective to this paper's outcomes.
Based on what the authors say for section 2 - it seems that more studies in this are needed. This stands as a knowledge gap in the literature. Thus why don't you include a suggestion on increasing the studies on this topic? Without additional research it will be hard to know if the 10% contribution is accurate or not.
Section 3.1 - storm surge has a huge impact in the numerous rising sectors of marine energy that are crucial to reduce climate change and consequent sea-level rise. This should be highlighted in this section, you may consider to use for example these two sets that provide you recent marine energy and offshore structures examples, for which storm surge and met-ocean conditions are crucial 10.1680/jmaen.2019.172.3.71 and 10.1680/jmaen.2020.173.4.96
L151 - is evaluated instead of be evaluated
L167 - in which year the reduction to 168.04 is obtained? if this year has gone by, was this estimate correct?
L175 - numerous challenges arise from this loss of wetlands in coastal regions, include refs DOI: 10.5894/rgci-n428 and DOI: 10.5894/RGCI-N442 which compile numerous examples on such challenges for the benefit of the reader
Discussion on the measures to mitigate sea level rise could have been made with a bit more detail or at least in a more systematized manner, through tables so that the reader benefits from organised information that can then easily been used in upcoming research works. Also in previous sections, the paper successfully provides numbers, percentages and several other relative quantities that provide a good perception on contributions to sea-level-rise etc...but this section fails to do it so. It would be nice to have some numbers on measures recently adopted throughout the world and their cost-benefit impact in local scale, e.g. in terms of risk reduction, money spent/money saved, economical sectors and number of habitants protected from sea-level-rise etc...
L311 put a comma after low
312-313 or lower and lower, we do not really know, given the uncertainty. BEtter to be careful with the words used and speculative sentences.
L331 - is the resilience based disaster prevention concept presented here entirely new? if not, please add some references.
L341 - ok, but how do you account for different levels of intrusion?
Section 5 - the quantitative disaster assessment concept based on resilience is introduced here for the coastal urban system - however, no actual case study is presented or what so ever, it seems to be only conceptually presented. Please make this clear in the beginning of the paper. As it stands it may lead to wrong expectations in the reader's mind.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
No comments
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
My comments are not addressed carefully. Hence, further improvements required (see review report attached)
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Reviewer 4 Report
my recommendations were attended and the manuscript is now ready to be published congratulations. Please ensure the references are in the journal's format.
Author Response
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