Sea Level Rise

Safe Landing Climates Lighthouse Activity

We aim to quantify an “acceptable” rate of sea-level rise and its irreversibility from multiple decades to millennia. We will estimate the impact of storm surges and cyclones on coastal communities and assess the potential for adaptation. The aim will be to improve projections by facilitating better coordination between global climate, cryosphere, and coastal modeling. This requires a regional/local perspective and interaction with coastal planners because anthropogenically induced sea-level hazards are already affecting coastal habitats and threatening livelihoods in some regions. Depending on the local setting, safe landing in terms of sea level means that the rate of sea-level rise must be limited, slowed, or reversed to allow adaptation measures to keep pace and be effective.

Outcomes:

  • More accurate understanding and prediction of poorly understood processes including ice sheet melting and future ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland, storm surges, and other global and regional sea-level drivers (including land subsidence)
  • A fuller range of ice sheet models of different levels of complexity and resolution with evaluation to better constrain uncertainties
  • New research on frameworks of coastal planning, adaptation, coastal protection, and the limits of adaptation
  • Interaction of modelling efforts across spatial scales from global to coastal

This topic will draw on the WCRP Grand Challenge on Regional Sea-Level Change and Coastal Impacts and the Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) Core Project.

Working Group:

Molly Mitchell (Chair) Virginia Institute of Marine Science USA
Elisabeth Holland (Chair) University of the South Pacific and University of Bergen Norway/Fiji
Heiko Goelzer NORCE Norwegian Research Centre AS Norway
Benjamin Hamlington NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory USA
Svetlana Jevrejeva National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool, UK UK
Christopher Little Atmospheric and Environmental Research USA
Roshin P. Raj Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center Norway
Swapna Panickal Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology India

Contact: Narelle van der Wel - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.


Affiliate Members:

Antonio Bonaduce Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC) Norway
Natalya Gomez Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University Canada
Holly Kyeore  Han Los Alamos National Laboratory USA
Nasim Hossein Hamzeh Atmospheric Science & Meteorogical Research Center (ASMERC) Iran
Thomas James Geological Survey of Canada and University of Victoria Canada
Volker  Klemann German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) Germany
Gad Levy Pan-Ocean Remote Sensing Association/NorthWest Research Association USA
Carlos Loureiro University of Stirling & University of KwaZulu-Natal UK/South Africa
Prajakta Mohite MSc Student India
Hasibun Naher BRAC University Bangladesh
Vinod Kumar Nathan SASTRA Deemed University India
Imee Necesito Inha University South Korea
Matthew  Palmer  Met Office Hadley Centre / University of Bristol UK
Naeem Shahzad National University of Sciences and Technology Pakistan
Ryan Sriver University of Illinois USA
Dongxiao Wang Sun Yat-sen University China
Matthew Widlansky University of Hawaii at Manoa USA

Last Updated: 05 September 2022