Localizing Sea Level Rise Projections for Decision-Makers

Global climate data is not always accessible to local decision-makers, especially when projections are at a country or hemispheric scale. The Washington Coastal Resilience Project addresses this problem by generating down-scaled probabilistic sea level rise predictions. Nicole Faghin, Coastal Management Specialist, and Dr. Ian Miller, Coastal Hazard Specialist, both at Washington Sea Grant, shared how they generated these predictions and work to disseminate the data to cities, towns, and NGOs working along the coast.

HIGHLIGHTS

Dr. Ian Miller, Coastal Hazard Specialist, Washington Sea Grant

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• The Washington Sea Grant (WSG) is a program run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) housed at the University of Washington that funds and conducts marine and coastal research, education, and outreach throughout the state.
• A 2014 survey of coastal managers found an “action gap” between problems viewed as important by survey participants and available resources, suggesting that managers were missing information needed to plan for and adapt to rising sea levels.
  • Previous sea level rise projections had a narrow range of uncertainty and were not localized for specific communities, which made it difficult for planners to use the information.
• The WSG recently completed the Washington Coastal Resilience Project, which produced a report published in 2018. The project’s objectives were to support an updated sea level rise and storm surge assessment for coastal Washington, to incorporate climate resilience into state agency processes and plans, to identify resilience co-benefits from existing investments, and to create outreach tools to facilitate resilience projects.
• The project included two innovations to close the action gap on sea level rise:
  • Adopt the use of Kopp’s Probabilistic Framework to show the range of uncertainty for possible sea level rise projections and percentiles associated with the likelihood of a particular amount of sea level rise.
  • Localize projections to specific communities, and incorporate the uplift (rise) or subsidence (fall) of land. Researchers developed an interactive map that allows community planners to download sea level rise projections for specific locations, and the Climate Impacts Group partnered with WSG to develop a tableau-based projection tool that allows users to easily navigate information.

Nicole Faghin, Coastal Management Specialist, Washington Sea Grant

• The Washington Coastal Resilience Project included four parts: sea level rise data, state agency guidance, local experience, and training and sharing.
• The goal of the local experience effort was to enhance the resilience of at least three Washington communities through pilot projects to be used as case studies for other communities.
  • Pilot projects were conducted in Tacoma, an urban community; Island County, a rural community; and in partnership with the Estuary and Salmon Restoration Program, a program run by the Washington Fish and Wildlife Service.
• In Tacoma, WSG worked with city departments and Metro Parks Tacoma to incorporate sea level rise in plans to improve existing parks and develop new parks.
• In Island County, the WSG led exercises to walk through sea level rise scenarios and teach how to use and understand projections using the NOAA Sea Level Rise Viewer and localized projections from the WSG.
  • Island County developed short-term, mid-term, and long-term strategies for homeowners, and a Community-Based Coastal Resilience Planning Guidebook. The Guidebook was developed by the community, and includes a five-step approach designed to be implemented at the local level by neighborhoods.
• The WSG has held over