Global warming has also resulted in the continuous melting of ice sheets or increase in iceberg calving from land-based ice sheets that has contributed significantly to sea-level rise (Cooper et al., 2005), which have a profound implication on the shoreline or coastal zone. Sea-level rise may result in landward progression or habitat loss, altered productivity as well as modification of basins. The coastal zones of Africa consist of verse resources for socio-economics development and rich biodiversity but have high population density and livelihood along the coast. Per the GEO-CCIOACZ (2016) technical report, climate change has significantly impacted the potentials of the coastal zones, seriously affecting the livelihood of the people. With population across West Africa expected to double by 2050 (Kinppertz et al., 2015), the potential impact of future anthropogenic-induced climate change on the coastal environment is still a grey area, needing rigorous research in other to protect the resources and livelihood.
The rise in sea surface temperature, which causes melting of the glaciers, has resulted in the sea level rise and increase in the intensity and frequency of storms that cause flooding at the coastal areas. There has been an increase in recurrent coastal inundation in a number of places along the coast of Ghana (Kwesi et all, 2011). Evaluation of coastal flood risk is a key requirement in hazard management and planning at national, regional and local scales given the significant proportion of the world’s population that resides in the coastal zone (Bates et all 2005). The capability to forecast these events is critical to the early warning and evacuation procedures implemented by disaster management and relief agencies. Therefore, more reliable and integrated models are needed to help predict these floods. There are currently numerous models being used in modelling various forms of floods.
The main goal of this research is to model coastal flooding and storm dynamics along the coast of Ghana. The specific objectives are:
- Characterize the forcing affecting storm and coastal flooding in the region to map the flood risk zones in the coast of Ghana.
- Investigate how existing inundation models perform in predicting coastal flooding and storm impact as compare to observe data over the coast of Ghana.
- Develop a local inundation model to predict storms and coastal floods over the coast of Ghana.