Sea level change and coastal climate services: The way forward

Abstract

For many climate change impacts such as drought and heat waves, global and nationalframeworks for climate services are providing ever more critical support to adaptation activities. Coastal zones are especially in need of climate services for adaptation, as they are increasinglythreatened by sea level rise and its impacts, such as submergence, flooding, shoreline erosion,salinization and wetland change. In this paper, we examine how annual to multi-decadal sea levelprojections can be used within coastal climate services (CCS). To this end, we review the currentstate-of-the art of coastal climate services in the US, Australia and France, and identify lessons learned. More broadly, we also review current barriers in the development of CCS, and identify researchand development efforts for overcoming barriers and facilitating their continued growth. The latterincludes: (1) research in the field of sea level, coastal and adaptation science and (2) cross-cuttingresearch in the area of user interactions, decision making, propagation of uncertainties and overallservice architecture design. We suggest that standard approaches are required to translate relativesea level information into the forms required to inform the wide range of relevant decisions acrosscoastal management, including coastal adaptation.

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ORCID for Robert J. Nicholls: orcid.org/0000-0002-9715-1109

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