The relative contribution of sea level rise and storm erosion to long term net coastline recession

The potential Climate change (CC) impacts on coasts and associated socio-economic and environmental risks are widely recognised internationally. One of the most talked about CC impacts is coastline recession. Any increase in mean sea level is expected to result in an upward and landward shift of the entire active profile causing net coastline recession (Bruun, 1962). Another phenomenon that can result in net coastline recession is the cumulative effect of storm erosion. This is due to the hysteresis effect in the storm erosion/dune recovery cycle (Ranasinghe et al. 2012). But what causes more recession: storms or sea level rise? This is a commonly asked question, to which science-backed answers have not been presented to date. This paper addresses this question via the application of a physics based, probabilistic numerical model at a typical swell dominated pocket beach located in SE Australia.