Impacts of sea level rise: review of

existing models and available data

Audrey Mouliérac

Plan Bleu

UNEP/MAP Regional Activity Centre

Sophia Antipolis

April 2011

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Contents

Introduction 5 Impacts of sea-level rise in the Mediterranean ................................................................................ 7

CIRCE: Climate Change and Impact Research: the Mediterranean Environment 9 1. Organization ...................................................................................................................... 9 2. Aims ................................................................................................................................ 9 3. Methodology....................................................................................................................... 9 4. Deliverables ....................................................................................................................... 9

CIRCLE-MED: Climate Impact Research Coordination for a Larger Europe – Mediterranean Group 10 1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 10 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 10

SURVAS: Synthesis and Upscaling of sea-level Rise Vulnerability Assessment Studies 11 1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 11 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 11 3. Deliverables ...................................................................................................................... 11

LOICZ: Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone 12 1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 12 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 12 3. Links with other projects ...................................................................................................... 12

CLIM-RUN project: Climate Local Information in the Mediterranean Responding to Users Needs 13 1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 13 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 13 3. Methodology...................................................................................................................... 13 4. Links with other projects ...................................................................................................... 13

ECLISE: Enabling Climate Service Information for Europe 15 1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 15 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 15

CMIP5: Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 16 1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 16 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 16 3. Links with other projects ...................................................................................................... 16

CORDEX: Coordinated Regional climate Downscaling Experiment 17 1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 17 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 17 3. Links with other projects ...................................................................................................... 17

HYMEX: Hydrological cycle in the Mediterranean Experiment 18 1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 18 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 18

HIPOCAS: Hindcast of Dynamic Processes of the Ocean and Coastal Areas of Europe 19 1. Links with other projects: ..................................................................................................... 19

COMBINE: Comprehensive modeling of the earth system for better climate prediction and projection 20

1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 20 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 20 3. Links with other projects: ..................................................................................................... 20

Ensembles 21 1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 21 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 21

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PRECIS: Providing Regional Climate for Impact Studies 22 1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 22 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 22

VANIMEDAT and VANIMEDAT-2: Decadal and interdecadal variability of sea level in the Mediterranean and Northeast Atlantic 23

1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 23 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 23 3. Methodology...................................................................................................................... 23

PESETA: Projection of Economic impacts of climate change in Sectors of the European Union based on bottom-up Analysis 24

1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 24 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 24 3. Links with other projects ...................................................................................................... 24

PRUDENCE: Prediction of Regional scenarios and Uncertainties for Defining EuropeaN Climate change risks and Effects 25

1. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 25

DINAS-COAST: Dynamic and Interactive Assessment of National, regional and Global Vulnerability of Coastal Zones to SLR 26

1. Organization ..................................................................................................................... 26 2. Aims ............................................................................................................................... 26 3. Methodology...................................................................................................................... 26 4. Links with other projects ...................................................................................................... 27

Databases 28 1. PSMSL: Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level............................................................................ 28 1.1. Links with other programmes ................................................................................................ 28 2. GLOSS: Global Sea Level Observing System ................................................................................ 28 2.1. Links with other programmes ................................................................................................ 29 2.2. Links with other programmes: ............................................................................................... 29 3. European Sea-Level Service (ESEAS) ........................................................................................ 29 3.1. DIVA database .................................................................................................................. 29

Bibliography 31

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Introduction

The Mediterranean basin is a region characterized by its vulnerability to changes in the water cycle and the impact of global warming on the human activities in the Mediterranean zone is a major concern. Already faced with water deficit and major problems of desertification and erosion while witnessing a significant decline in its land and marine biodiversity, over the coming century the Mediterranean is expected to be a “hot spot” for climate change. Since much of the Mediterranean is in a transition zone between the temperate climate of central-northern Europe and the arid climate of Northern Africa, even relatively small climate changes can have important effects on the region’s ecosystems, human activities and human security. Climate change is an additional pressure to the Mediterranean environment and is likely to have significant impacts on coastal systems, particularly through sea-level rise and changes in the frequency and/or intensity of extreme weather events, such as storms and surges.

Sea levels are rising, and have been rising for roughly twelve thousand years, since the end of the last ice age. But while the Earth has experienced multiple episodes of sea level variations during its history, the changes expected in the coming decades are special in the way that they will take place extremely rapidly. Higher temperatures due to climate change are expected to further raise sea level by expanding ocean water, melting mountain glaciers and small ice caps, and causing portions of Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets to melt or slide into the oceans. The crucial question is about how much it will rise and how quickly.

Currently, information on climate variability and climate change is mostly obtained via the use of Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs), which combine atmospheric general circulations and ocean general circulations by including the influence of the biosphere, carbon cycle and the chemical composition of the atmosphere. They are currently the most complex climatic models and the only available tool to obtain a representation of future climates.

According to the models used in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007), for all SRES scenarios, the global average sea level will rise between 18 and 59 cm by 2100, while during the entire 20th century the Mediterranean has only experienced a rise between 11 and 13 cm. But some hypotheses predict a sea level elevation at the global scale of more than one meter during the current century, and up to tens of meters over longer time scales (Hallegate & al., 2009), because of the high uncertainty concerning the rate of ice melt. The Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets each contain enough water to raise sea-level about 7 m, while East Antarctic Ice sheet has enough ice to raise sea-level over 60 m. (Titus, 1986)1

For technical reasons of calculation capacity though, the models cannot be used to develop calculations for every point of the globe or the atmosphere: they use a grid of cells to map the earth. A limited number of points are linked together form a three dimensional net for which the mesh size is variable from one model to another. Global models do not therefore offer a continuous representation of the globe’s surface or the atmosphere and the calculated values between two points of a mesh must be extrapolated. This approximate calculation remains a problem for the assessment of the impacts of climate change at a local level since the resolution is not satisfactory: grids are too large to allow for the modelling of actual weather and for the simulation of realistic extreme events and the detailed spatial structure of variables like temperature and precipitation over heterogeneous surfaces like the Mediterranean.

Considering the uncertainties concerning the SLR predictions, and the fact that changes in future sea level will not be uniform around the world – the response of regional seas could be substantially different and will depend on local climate characteristics and land movements that cannot be represented by the current resolution of climate models. It would appear wise to consider that “no solid estimation can be given for the Mediterranean Sea” (Hallegatte & al., 2007).

1 The EU-funded DAMOCLES project (Developing Arctic Modeling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies) is working to increase the understanding of climate change in the Arctic. It is specifically concerned with the potential for a significantly reduced sea ice cover, and the impacts this might have on the environment and on human activities, both regionally and globally. http://www.damocles-eu.org/ The also EU-funded ice2sea programme (http://www.ice2sea.eu/) aims at quantifying the contribution of continental ice to SLR over the next 200 years, to inform the debate on climate-change mitigation, coastal adaptation and sea-defence planning.

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In order to study the impacts of climate change, we need to predict changes on finer scales. One of the techniques for doing so is through the use of Regional Climate Models (RCMs). Regional models are built that differ from global models in that they are concentrated on a specific region of globe and allow the use of a reduced mesh size. They have the potential to improve the representation of the climate information which is relevant for assessing a country’s vulnerability to climate change. However, these regional models cannot operate autonomously, independent from an understanding of global climatic processes. Downscaling systems allow global processes to be taken into account in regional models. Downscaling is therefore a major methodological issue in order to be able to determine the characteristics of future climate in the Mediterranean. Downscaling techniques, including RCMs, have been developed to refine the resolution produced by AOGCMs.

What appears to be lacking in any modeling work are the inputs to the model, namely reliable data on the seas and oceans, long-term trends, physical characteristics of coastal areas, etc. Sea-level predictions necessitate data about how sea-level has changed over the past few hundred years or how it is changing today. The global coverage of satellite altimetry since the early 1990s (TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason) has improved the estimate of global SLR. Near-global ocean temperature data for the last 50 years have been recently made available, allowing the first observationally based estimate of the thermal expansion contribution to SLR in past decades. For recent years, better estimates of the land ice contribution to sea level are available from various observations of glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets.

The physical impacts of SLR can be predicted, even modeled quantitatively on the basis of the present-day parameters of morphology, hydrodynamics, sediment budgets, land subsidence and the effects of artificial structures. What is more difficult to estimate is the impact of these changes on the future socio-economic framework of threatened lowlands (Jeftic & al., UNEP, 1993). They will vary from place to place depending on local and regional biogeophysical and socioeconomic factors. Sea-level rise has also a local and regional distribution because of the regional oceanographic responses to global warming and the local/regional uplift or subsidence of the land surface; the sum of these 3 components is termed “relative sea-level rise” (Nicholls & Mimura, 1998).

The important task is to identify potential “risk” areas, with respect to SLR. Small islands, deltaic settings and coastal ecosystems are particularly vulnerable. Rising sea levels inundate wetlands and other low-lying lands, erode beaches, intensify flooding, and increase the salinity of rivers, bays, and groundwater tables. Coastal wetland ecosystems, such as salt marshes and mangroves are particularly vulnerable to rising sea level because they are generally within a few feet of sea level.

As the sea rises, the outer boundary of these wetlands will erode, and new wetlands will form inland as previously dry areas are flooded by the higher water levels. The amount of newly created wetlands, however, could be much smaller than the lost area of wetlands - especially in developed areas protected with bulkheads, dikes, and other structures that keep new wetlands from forming inland. The IPCC AR4 suggests that by 2080, sea level rise could convert 33 % of the world’s coastal wetlands to open water (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency).

Sea level rise also increases the vulnerability of coastal areas to flooding during storms for several reasons. First, a given storm surge from a hurricane or northeaster builds on top of a higher base of water. Shore erosion also increases vulnerability to storms, by removing the beaches and dunes that would otherwise protect coastal property from storm waves. Sea level rise also increases coastal flooding from rainstorms, because low areas drain more slowly as sea level rises.

Other impacts of climate change may further enhance or mitigate coastal flooding. Flooding from rainstorms may become worse if higher temperatures lead to increasing rainfall intensity during severe storms. An increase in the intensity of tropical storms would increase flood and wind damages. Urbanization and the growth of large coastal cities is placing growing demands on coastal resources and increasing exposure to coastal hazards such as erosion and flooding. Global climate change, particularly SLR, will exacerbate these problems.

Knowledge on coastal vulnerability enables scientists and policymakers to anticipate impacts that could emerge as a result of SLR. Considering the high natural and socio-economic values that might be threatened

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or lost in coastal zones, it is important to identify the types and magnitude of problems that different coastal areas may have to face. Anyway, « well anticipating the challenges will be cheaper than doing nothing » says Jean Jouzel, glaciologist and member of the IPCC. For instance, the value of the national roads lost by a 1 m SLR was estimated at 2 billion euros, and the value of houses threatened by rising water and erosion, in Languedoc-Roussillon only, represents 35 billion euros.2

Global vulnerability assessments (GVAs) studies have been the main sources of quantitative information on potential impacts of SLR. The GVAs carried out by Hoozemans (1993) estimate that an average of 46 million people per year experiences a storm-surge flooding and that this number would raise to over 100 million people, assuming 1 m SLR and 30 years of socio-economic development. A 1 m accelerated SLR would threaten half of the world’s coastal wetlands of international importance. The assessment also projects that, in the same scenario, 59% of coastal wetlands would be lost. The assessments by Hoozemans et al. (1993) and its update by Baarse (1995) remain the main sources of global information on coastal vulnerability to SLR (Hinkel & Klein, 2009).

However, the limitations of the widespread use of GVAs have become apparent because of the obsolescence and low spatial resolutions of underlying data sources, the limited number of scenarios used, the reliance of global SLR as the only driver of coastal vulnerability, the non-consideration of bio-geophysical and socio-economic dynamics and feedback and arbitrary and simplistic assumptions regarding adaptation (Hinkel & Klein, 2009).

It appears that the available data for those vulnerability assessments are usually scattered, found in a fragmented and non-coherent form that compromises the consistency and reliability of evaluations. This is due to the fact that most vulnerability assessment studies are performed to inform local and national decision-makers and managers, rather than to provide comparable quantitative data for the purpose of regional and global aggregation and synthesis. The importance of reliable data provision mechanisms and of organized, planned and coherent coastal databases as prerequisites for coastal analysis and management has been emphasized by many researchers. Some projects seek to address these limitations. (See DINAS-COAST: Dynamic and Interactive Assessment of National, regional and Global Vulnerability of Coastal Zones to SLR).

Impacts of sea-level rise in the Mediterranean

A 1 m rise of sea level is the hypothesis kept in most of the vulnerability assessments. Even if extreme scenarios 3have been demonstrated to be impossible, exploring a wide range of scenarios – from 1-m to an extreme scenario of 5-m rise/century (Dasgupta & al., 2007) – of SLR impacts and responses is very valuable though for coastal issues and adaptation strategies. Indeed, uncertainty in climate models makes it impossible to directly use climate model outputs as inputs for infrastructure design and policy makers must want to adapt to most possible changes in climate conditions (Hallegate, 2008).

The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) international project entitled “Climate Change and Mediterranean: Environmental and Socioeconomic Impacts of Climate Change and Sea-level Rise in the Mediterranean Region” (1992) thus introduced several case studies in Mediterranean countries on the implications of climate changes (including sea-level rise) in the island of Rhodes, for the Kastela Bay region and the Cres-Losinj islands (Croatia), for the Syrian coast and for Malta. Among these implications, the case studies reveal for instance that a 1 m SLR would endanger the main sea level aquifer in Malta, which will result in the majority of the galleries in Malta being at a level no longer optimal for the extraction of potable groundwater because of saline water intrusion, reducing the production by 40%.

2 In an article of G. Allix, in Le Monde, « L’évaluation en France, région par région, de l’impact du réchauffement climatique est une priorité », juin 2010 3 The role of the ATLANTIS project was to look at an extreme scenario – a 5 m SLR in 100 years due to the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet – and especially to understand the societal response to such an extreme change. http://www.ivm.vu.nl/en/projects/Archive/atlantis/index.asp

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Fankhauser (1994) assessed the costs of protection versus the costs of land loss for the OECD and, hence, provides an analysis of responses pertinent to Europe. He concludes that it is optimal to protect nearly all harbors and cities and open coasts and beaches in densely populated areas. Results using the DIVA database and the model produced within the DINAS-COAST project have been developed for Europe in the PESETA: Projection of Economic impacts of climate change in Sectors of the European Union based on bottom-up Analysis project, to estimate the physical impacts and economic costs to coasts from SLR and flooding storm events4.

Small islands, deltas and coastal ecosystems are the most vulnerable. Furthermore, deltas naturally subside and thus experience a “relative sea-level rise” without any global rise. This figure from the Plan Bleu State of the environment and development in the Mediterranean report (2009) synthesizes the main expected climate changes and vulnerabilities associated with greenhouse gas induced global warming. SLR might affect vulnerable regions such as the Nile Delta (Dasgupta & al, 2009) and the Venice Lagoon (Rinaldo & al, 2008).

A major limitation to such vulnerability assessments has been, among other things, the lack of appropriate computational resolution, the need of improvement of data collection and management and the lack of co-ordination between different modelling groups. These problems are tackled in Europe through the European Commission’s Framework Programmes. Climate change research has been present in the EU’s Framework Programmes since the 1980s, to quantify global and local impacts of climate change in the most sensitive regions of Europe and worldwide. Overall objectives such as wide-range climate change scenarios or the uncertainty regional climate scenarios indeed require a community effort. (See CLIM-RUN project: Climate Local Information in the Mediterranean Responding to User Needs); ECLISE: Enabling CLimate Information Services for Europe; PRUDENCE: Prediction of Regional scenarios and Uncertainties for Defining EuropeaN Climate change risks and Effects) ; CIRCE : Climate Change and Impact Research - the Mediterranean Environment, CORDEX : Coordinated Regional climate Downscaling Experiment.

4An improvement of DIVA (See DINAS-COAST: Dynamic and Interactive Assessment of National, regional and Global Vulnerability of Coastal Zones to SLR compared to other vulnerability assessments is the spatial and temporal resolution of the results. DIVA offers a great variety of additional impact indicators, such as land loss, people migrated, annual tourist arrivals. In addition, monetary values are placed on some of these impacts, as well as on the costs and benefits of measures to protect against these impacts.

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CIRCE: Climate Change and Impact Research: the Mediterranean Environment

www.circeproject.eu

April 2007 – April 2011

1. Organization

This project, granted under the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission (EC FP6), is coordinated by INGV (National Institute of Volcanology and Geophysics) in Italy, and led by Antonio Navarra from INGV and Laurence Tubiana from IDDRI.

2. Aims

CIRCE is developing for the first time an assessment of the climate change impacts in the Mediterranean area. It aims at studying climate change not only in regard to scientific data but also in connection with economic and social impacts, evaluating the best strategies of adaptation to the climate change in the Mediterranean.

The objectives of the project are (1) to predict and to quantify physical impacts of climate change in the Mediterranean area, (2) to evaluate the consequences of climate change for the society and the economy of the populations located in the Mediterranean area, (3) to develop an integrated approach to understand combined effects of climate change and (4) to identify adaptation and mitigation strategies in collaboration with regional stakeholders.

3. Methodology

Case studies and specific participative methods.

Estimation of the impacts on agriculture, ecosystems, forest, air quality and human health , with an emphasis on economics and social consequences, especially regarding tourism, energy markets and local migration.

Provision of climate scenarios for the 21st century over the Mediterranean region for use in impact studies, by producing a set of models targeted at the Mediterranean area (socio economic scenarios already available such as those from IPCC will be used by a multi-model system to produce a set of climate scenarios which will allow to assess the role and the feedbacks of the Mediterranean Sea in the global climate system).

CIRCE will develop specific modeling scenarios for the Mediterranean, in terms of resolution, process and feedback inclusions, understanding and specific diagnostic studies for the Mediterranean area, on the basis of the extensive modeling experience already available.

4. Deliverables

The end products of CIRCE will be the Final Report - Regional Assessment of Climate Change in the Mediterranean (RACCM), a decision support system tool for adaptation and mitigation strategies tailored specifically for the Mediterranean environment. The RACCM will be produced in close consultation with stakeholders, also through workshops, consensus conferences and focus groups, in order to take into account the different needs of the Mediterranean region.

At the end of June 2009, IDDRI and CIRED-Meteo France, partners of CIRCE, have produced the report "The future of Mediterranean: from impacts of climate change to adaptation issues".

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CIRCLE-MED: Climate Impact Research Coordination for a Larger Europe – Mediterranean Group

http://www.circle-med.net/index.php?pagename=home

http://www.circle-med.net/doc/CIRCLEMEDflyer_en.pdf

1. Organization

CIRCLE is an EC FP6 funded networking project. CIRCLE-MED is a geographical group of CIRCLE.

2. Aims

CIRCLE aims at implementing a European Research Area (ERA-Net) in the field of climate change impacts and adaptation research. CIRCLE-MED addresses issues of common interest to the Mediterranean countries. It aims at creating a Mediterranean research community network through collaborative projects on climate change impact research, with the objective to bring the results to policy and decision-makers.

Since answers to climate change are elaborated by national and/or regional decision and policy makers assisted by national scientific programmes, CIRCLE offers the opportunity to share knowledge on impacts based on advanced modeling and various scenarios.

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SURVAS: Synthesis and Upscaling of sea-level Rise Vulnerability Assessment Studies

http://www.tiempocyberclimate.org/portal/archive/issue47/t47a5.htm

http://www.tiempocyberclimate.org/portal/archive/issue3637/t3637a3.htm

http://www.ukcip.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=435

1. Organization

SURVAS is an EU funded project, with additional funding from the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research, and is an IGBP.

LOICZ : Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone Project.

2. Aims

It aims at synthesizing and upscaling all available national and subnational coastal vulnerability studies and developing standardized data sets for coastal impact indicators suitable for regional and global analysis, thus improving the knowledge on the impacts and adaptation to accelerated SLR.

The main objectives of the project are (1) to analyze and consolidate existing vulnerability assessment data, (2) to generate a regional and global database on the potential impacts of accelerated SLR, (3) to aggregate and synthesize the obtained data and publicize them in different forms according to the specific needs of potential end-users (policy makers, non-governmental organizations, regional and global organizations and academics) and (4) to promote improved methodologies for the production of vulnerability assessments.

By reviewing and providing easily accessible and readily usable data on national to global vulnerability to impacts of accelerated sea-level rise on natural habitats as well as socio-economic assets, SURVAS is fostering a better understanding of one of the major impacts of climate change, increased sea level.

3. Deliverables

For the European region, SURVAS fostered national reviews of available information, which will be published as a special issue of the Journal of Coastal Research. SURVAS deliverables are available online at www.survas.mdx.ac.uk.

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LOICZ: Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone

http://www.loicz.org/about_us/index.html.en

1993-2015

1. Organization

LOICZ is a core project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP). It is an international research project involving scientists who have been investigating changes in the biology, chemistry and physics of the coastal zone since 1993. Since 2003, LOICZ has expanded its areas of research to include social, political and economic sciences in order to address the human dimensions of the coastal zone.

2. Aims

The research results are used to explore the role humans play in the coastal zone, their vulnerability to changing environments, and the options to protect coasts for future generations. The main goal of LOICZ is to provide the knowledge, understanding and prediction needed to allow coastal communities to assess, anticipate and respond to the interaction of global change and local pressures which determine coastal change.

3. Links with other projects

The DINAS-COAST: Dynamic and Interactive Assessment of National, regional and Global Vulnerability of Coastal Zones to SLR project contributes to the Theme 5 of LOICZ: “Towards coastal system sustainability by managing land - ocean interactions”.

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CLIM-RUN project: Climate Local Information in the Mediterranean Responding to Users Needs

European Commission, catalogue of FP7 project, Cooperation – Environment http://ec.europa.eu/research/environment/pdf/fp7_catalogue.pdf

2010-2013

1. Organization

CLIM-RUN is a collaborative project, part of the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme. Plan Bleu is the leading research center for CLIM-RUN Work Package n°1 “Climate services analysis and support” which main objective is the identification and analysis of the climate services and the design of a bottom-up protocol for the identification and production of relevant climate information for stakeholder use.

2. Aims

CLIM-RUN aims at developing a protocol for applying new methodologies and improved modeling and downscaling tools (including Regional Climate Modeling) for the provision of adequate climate information at regional to local scale that is relevant to and usable by different sectors of society (policymakers, industry, cities, etc.). One outcome of the project will be the creation of a Mediterranean network of climate services that would eventually converge into a pan-European network. CLIM-RUN will thus act as intermediary between data users and data providers (e.g. national and international Meteorological Centers). CLIM-RUN will thus develop a Mediterranean-wide databank including climate, environmental and sector relevant variables.

3. Methodology

It will develop a bottom-up approach directly involving stakeholders early in the process with the aim of identifying well defined needs at regional and local scales for the assessment and management of climate related risk. The protocol is assessed by application to relevant case studies covering vulnerable sites in the Mediterranean, involving interdependent sectors which deserve attention in view of their link to the climate issue (primarily tourism and energy), and natural hazards (wild fires) for representative target areas (mountainous regions, coastal areas, islands) and at appropriate time scale. A tourism case study involving Tunisia will focus on coastal tourism, with issues like sea-level rise and beach erosion. Two case studies will be implemented on the western and eastern coasts of the North Adriatic Sea, particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts such as increase in flood risk, increase in erosion and permanent submersion of low-lying areas.

4. Links with other projects

CLIM-RUN will build on the progress made by major limitation to such vulnerability assessments has been, among other things, the lack of appropriate computational resolution, the need of improvement of data collection and management and the lack of coordination between different modelling groups. These problems are tackled in Europe through the European Commission’s Framework Programmes. Climate change research has been present in the EU’s Framework Programmes since the 1980s, to quantify global and local impacts of climate change in the most sensitive regions of Europe and worldwide. Overall objectives such as wide range climate change scenarios or the uncertainty regional climate scenarios indeed require a community effort. (See CLIM-RUN project: Climate Local Information in the Mediterranean Responding to Users Needs; ECLISE: Enabling Climate Service Information for Europe; PRUDENCE: Prediction of Regional scenarios and Uncertainties for Defining EuropeaN Climate change risks and effects).

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CIRCE: Climate Change and Impact Research: The Mediterranean Environment, in which most of the CLIM-RUN partners are involved. It will benefit from the modeling capacity and database developed during the CIRCE project, from a strengthening partnership between EU and North-Africa scientists. CLIM-RUN will build on the experience developed in CIRCE (EU FP6, ongoing), MICE5 (EU FP5, modeling the impact of climate extremes) and CRANIUM (UK, Climate Change Risk Assessment: new Impact and Uncertainty Methods http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/projects/cranium/) projects in developing stakeholder dialogue.

CLIM-RUN will build on the outputs from the ENSEMBLES project which has largely contributed to produce a probabilistic framework to estimate uncertainties in future European climate at the seasonal to decadal and longer timescales. It will make use of the unique high-resolution database of present and future Regional Climate Modeling (RCM) climate simulations over the Euro-Mediterranean region completed as part of ENSEMBLES. It will also link with the COMBINE and THOR projects which are performed global decadal predictions and climate change projections for the CMIP5: Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5. CLIM-RUN depends on the availability of data from CMIP5 and CORDEX: Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment projects.

Links to other climate change impact EU projects will be beneficial to CLIM-RUN: PESETA: Projection of Economic impacts of climate change in Sectors of the European Union based on bottom-up Analysis (Projection of Economic impacts of climate change in Sectors of the European Union based on bottom-up Analyses) and CECILIA (http://www.cecilia-eu.org/) which addresses the impact of climate change at the regional to local scale for the central and Eastern Europe using the high resolution RCM systems also employed in CLIM-RUN.

CLIM-RUN should also develop a close relation with ECLISE.

5 MICE (http://www.springerlink.com/content/31gu620751607x60/fulltext.pdf) is part of a cluster of three projects, all related to European climate change and its impacts. The other projects in the cluster are PRUDENCE (Prediction of Regional Scenarios and Uncertainties for Defining European Climate Change Risks and Effects) and STARDEX (Statistical and Regional Dynamical Downscaling of Extremes for European Regions)

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ECLISE: Enabling Climate Service Information for Europe

European Commission, catalogue of FP7 project, Cooperation – Environment

http://ec.europa.eu/research/environment/pdf/fp7_catalogue.pdf

2010-2013

1. Organization

EC-FP7

2. Aims

The central objective of ECLISE is to take the first step towards the realization of a European Climate Service, since the coordination of climate services at an international level, and the cooperation of climate scientists and climate impacts specialists, would advance benefits of climate services to support climate adaptation policies. It does so by providing climate services for several climate-vulnerable regions in Europe, organized at a sectorial level: coastal defence, cities, water resources and energy production.

ECLISE will define how a pan-European Climate Service could be developed in the future, based on experiences from the aforementioned local services and the involvement of a broader set of European decision makers and stakeholders.

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CMIP5: Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5

http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/

1. Organization

It is developed under the auspices of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) to produce a new generation of decadal climate predictions and long term projection.

2. Aims

CMIP is a standard experimental protocol for studying the output of coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation models (GCMs). CMIP5 will provide the basic experiment framework in support of the IPCC fifth assessment report (AR5). It will include 21st century projections as well as decadal prediction experiments with more than 20 AOGCMs worldwide.

3. Links with other projects

The CMIP5 data will be of public access and will provide critical information available to CLIM-RUN project: Climate Local Information in the Mediterranean Responding to Users Needs. It is also expected that CLIM-RUN will provide valuable and innovative input into the analysis of the CMIP5 experiments, both in the decadal prediction and centennial projection frameworks, particularly in the area of regional to local climate information uncertainties.

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CORDEX: Coordinated Regional climate Downscaling Experiment

http://www.meteo.unican.es/en/projects/CORDEX

http://wcrp.ipsl.jussieu.fr/RCD_CORDEX.html

1. Organization

Also launched within the WCRP, CORDEX, contrary to CMIP5, involves the development of Regional Climate Models.

2. Aims

CORDEX aims at producing regional climate change scenarios meant for input into impact and adaptation studies. It will develop a framework to evaluate and improve regional climate downscaling techniques for use in downscaling global climate projections. It will foster an international coordinated effort to produce improved multi-model RCD (Regional Climate Downscaling)-based high resolution climate change information over regions worldwide for input into impact and adaptation work, and it will promote greater interaction and communication between global climate modelers, the downscaling community and end-users to better support impact and adaptation activities.

3. Links with other projects

It is expected that strong mutual interactions between CLIM-RUN and CORDEX will take place for the Mediterranean region: CLIM-RUN will contribute to CORDEX via the establishment of a MED-CORDEX initiative aimed at the Mediterranean. MED-CORDEX is a coordinated action between CORDEX and HYMEX: Hydrological cycle in the Mediterranean Experiment Programs ; it will make use of both regional atmospheric climate models and regional coupled systems.

21-26 March 2011: International Conference on CORDEX:

http://wcrp.ipsl.jussieu.fr/RCD_Projects/CORDEX/CordexConf_Announcement.pdf

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HYMEX: Hydrological cycle in the Mediterranean Experiment

http://www.hymex.org/

1. Organization

HyMex is one of the seven thematic programs of MISTRALS6 (Mediterranean Integrated STudies at Regional And Local Scales), a decennial research initiative seeking to better understand the “environmental functioning” of the Mediterranean basin under the pressure of global changes.

2. Aims

Within MISTRALS, HyMeX aims at (1) a better understanding of the water cycle, with emphasis on extreme events, by monitoring and modelling the Mediterranean atmosphere-land-ocean coupled system, its variability from the event to the seasonal and interannual scales, and its characteristics over one decade (2010-2020) in the context of global change, (2) assessing the social and economic vulnerability to extreme events and adaptation capacity.

6 http://mistrals.insu.cnrs.fr/spip/documents/generalites/depliantMISTRALS.pdf http://www.hymex.org/global/documents/june_2010/Presentations/THU-afternoon/Mistrals.pdf

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HIPOCAS: Hindcast of Dynamic Processes of the Ocean and Coastal Areas of Europe

http://www.mar.ist.utl.pt/hipocas/overview.asp

HIPOCAS was initiated in order to generate high-resolution homogeneous 40-year wave and sea level hindcasts with horizontal resolutions that are adequate to represent at least the major features of the coastline and the bathymetry. It is a downscaled re-analysis of meteorological and oceanographic fields.

1. Links with other projects

The data provided is used in VANIMEDAT and VANIMEDAT2: Decadal and interdecadal variability of sea level in the Mediterranean and Northeast Atlantic.

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COMBINE: Comprehensive modeling of the earth system for better climate prediction and projection

http://www.combine-project.eu/

More information: http://ec.europa.eu/research/environment/pdf/cop-15.pdf

2009-2013

1. Organization

COMBINE is a collaborative project of the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme.

2. Aims

COMBINE brings together research groups to advance Earth system models7 for more accurate climate projections and for reduced uncertainty in the prediction of climate and climate change in the next decades, for a better assessment of changes in the physical climate system and of their impacts in the societal and economic system.

Within the 8th Work Package “Impacts and scenarios”, regional feedbacks to ESMs and their influence on regional impacts are addressed for the Eastern Mediterranean climate region, with a focus on the simulation of regional feedbacks between aerosols, clouds and precipitation. Local scales are also addressed for Greece and Cyprus by applying further downscaling techniques.

3. Links with other projects:

The work will strengthen the scientific base for environmental policies of the European Union for the climate negotiations, and will provide input to the IPCC 5th Assessment Report.

7 Earth system models are sets of equations describing the processes within and between the atmosphere, the ocean, the cryosphere and the terrestrial and marine biosphere. The equations contain information about chemical, physical and biological mechanisms governing the rates of changes of the elements of the earth system. These models can be used to study the past climate or to portray the evolution of future climate.

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Ensembles

http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com/docs/Ensembles_final_report_Nov09.pdf

More information: http://ec.europa.eu/research/environment/pdf/cop-15.pdf

September 2004 – December 2009

1. Organization

The project is a project of the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme. It is led by the UK Met Office (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/projects/ensembles.html) and comprises a consortium of 66 institutes from 20 countries. In addition, 30 other organizations, mostly from Europe, have joined the project as affiliates.

2. Aims

ENSEMBLES was initiated to help inform researchers, decision makers, businesses and the public by providing them with climate information obtained through the use of the latest climate modeling and analysis tools, state-of-the-art computer models which are used to project future climate change and its impacts on the environment. It aims at developing the first high resolution climate observation datasets for Europe that can be used to validate ensemble predictions.

The value of the ENSEMBLES project is in running multiple climate models (“ensembles”); a method known to improve the accuracy and reliability of forecasts For the first time, a common ensemble forecast system will be developed for use across a range of timescales (seasonal, decadal, and longer) and spatial scales (global, regional, and local). This model system will be used to construct integrated scenarios of future climate change, including both non-intervention and stabilization scenarios (the stabilization scenario developed in ENSEMBLES is the first of its kind to run an ensemble of Global Climate Models). The result is a range of future predictions assessed to decide which of the outcomes are more likely than the others, in order to assist policy makers, at all levels, in determining future strategies to address climate change.

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PRECIS: Providing Regional Climate for Impact Studies

http://precis.metoffice.com/index.html

1. Organization

This model has been developed at the Hadley center at the UK MET Office (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/hadleycentre/).

It is sponsored by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the United Nations Development Programme – Global Environment Facility (UNDP-GEF).

2. Aims

PRECIS is a portable Regional Climate Modeling system that can be run on a personal computer and applied to any area of the globe to generate detailed climate change scenarios. The PRECIS handbook (http://precis.metoffice.com/docs/PRECIS_Handbook.pdf) describes how to generate high-resolution climate change scenarios using this RCM.

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VANIMEDAT and VANIMEDAT-2: Decadal and interdecadal variability of sea level in the Mediterranean and Northeast Atlantic

http://www.pices.int/publications/presentations/Climate_Change_2008/Climate_Change_2008_S3_1/S3_1_Gomis.pdf

http://earth.esa.int/goce06/GOCEabstractbook3.pdf

1. Organization

VANIMEDAT is a project funded by the Spanish Marine Science Program.

2. Aims

VANIMEDAT has several specific objectives:

Determine the spatial and temporal sea-level variability in the recent decades, devoting special attention to the consistency between coastal (tide gauge records) and open sea (altimetry) observations.

Quantify the contribution, at a regional level, of the different mechanisms that drive sea-level variability, by use of numerical models.

VANIMEDAT-2 focuses on future marine scenarios for the 21st century, since the global models used by the IPCC have a low spatial resolution, not adapted to the Mediterranean Sea. Besides sea level, other variables are studied in VANIMEDAT-2 to broaden the scope of VANIMEDAT, such as temperature, salinity and currents.

3. Methodology

VANIMEDAT will make use of long tide gauge records, improved altimetric data sets and of data derived from the HIPOCAS: Hindcast of Dynamic Processes of the Ocean and Coastal Areas of Europe project, to determine the variability in sea level. To quantify the contribution of the different mechanisms to sea level variability, the results of numerical models will be used to (1) quantify the effect of atmospheric pressure and wind forcing on sea level from the analysis of sea-level residuals produced by the model HAMSOM8, (2) quantify the contribution of the steric component from the results produced by a 3D baroclinic model forced by HIPOCAS heat fluxes and (3) estimate the ocean mass increase as the difference between total sea level and the two contributions previously determined.

VANIMEDAT-2 will base its future marine scenarios on two types of numerical simulations:

The baroclinic9 regional model first developed in VANIMEDAT used to obtain temperature, salinity and sea level fields as well as the rest of parameters forecasted or diagnosed by the model. The model which was used in VANIMEDAT in hindcast mode to simulate the last four decades of the 20th century has to be adapted in VANIMEDAT-2 to forecast future scenarios.

A barotropic model used to isolate the mechanical forcing (the effect of atmospheric pressure and wind). In this case, the focus is exclusively on sea level, in particular in the determination for the 21st century of long-term extreme values.

8 HAMburg Shelf-Ocean-Model: http://www.ifm.zmaw.de/forschung/modelle/hamsom/ 9 Baroclinic models are dynamic models formulated with the assumption that the wind can change with height. As a result, these models must account for multiple levels, contrary to barotropic models which are single level models formulated with the assumption that the atmospheric structure does not vary with height.

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PESETA: Projection of Economic impacts of climate change in Sectors of the European Union based on bottom-up Analysis

http://peseta.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.html

http://peseta.jrc.ec.europa.eu/docs/Costalareas.html

1. Organization

PESETA is coordinated by the “Economics of Climate Change, Energy and Transport” unit of the JRC/IPTS10, and involves several research institutes (JRC/IES11, ICIS-Maastricht University12, AEA Technology13, Metroeconomica14, University of Southampton, FEEM, and Polytechnic University of Madrid). The Rossby Center15 that has provided climate data from its transient scenario.

2. Aims

The objective of this project is to make a multi-sectoral assessment of the impacts of climate change in Europe for the 2011-2040 and 2071-2100 time horizons.

PESETA focuses on the impacts of climate change on different sectors: coastal systems, human health, agriculture, tourism and floods. For each of these sectors, a corresponding sectoral-based study is developed by the project partners. PESETA provides a valuable indication of the economic costs of climate change in Europe based on physical impact assessment and state-of-art high-resolution climate scenarios.

3. Links with other projects

PESETA benefits from past research projects that have developed impact modeling capabilities (e.g.DINAS-COAST: Dynamic and interactive Assessment of National, regional and Global Vulnerability of Coastal Zones to SLR) and high-resolution climate scenarios for Europe (PRUDENCE: Prediction of Regional scenarios and Uncertainties for Defining EuropeaN Climate change risks and Effects).

10 European Commission’s Joint Research Center – Institute for Prospective Technological Studies 11 European Commission’s Joint Research Center – Institute for Environment and Sustainability 12 International Centre for Integrated assessment and Sustainable development 13 Consulting firm in the area of climate change, energy and environment split off from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority 14 Consuting group specialized in economic and policy analysis of environmental, resource use and sustainable development issues. 15 Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute’s climate modelling research unit

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PRUDENCE: Prediction of Regional scenarios and Uncertainties for Defining EuropeaN Climate change risks and Effects

http://prudence.dmi.dk/

1. Aims

PRUDENCE is a European-scale investigation with the following objectives:

To address and reduce resolution deficiencies in regional projections;

To quantify the uncertainties in predictions of future climate and its impacts, using an array of climate models and impact models and expert judgment on their performance;

To interpret the results in relation to European policies for adapting to or mitigating climate change.

PRUDENCE addresses these challenges by using state-of-the-art high resolution climate models, by co-coordinating the project goals to address critical aspects of uncertainty, and by applying impact models and impact assessment methodologies to provide the link between the provision of climate information and its likely application to serve the needs of European society and economy.

PRUDENCE will provide a series of high-resolution climate change scenarios for 2071-2100 for Europe, a quantitative assessment of the risks arising from changes in regional weather and climate in different parts of Europe, by estimating future changes in extreme events such as flooding and windstorms and by providing a robust estimation of the likelihood and magnitude of such changes.

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DINAS-COAST: Dynamic and Interactive Assessment of National, regional and Global Vulnerability of Coastal Zones to SLR

Hinkel J. & Klein R.J.T., 2009. Integrating knowledge to assess coastal vulnerability to sea-level rise: the development of the DIVA tool.

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/dinas-coast/

http://www.ukcip.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=435

1. Organization

DINAS-COAST is an EU-funded project coordinated by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Other partners are: the Flood Hazard Research Centre, Middlesex University, United Kingdom; Delft Hydraulics, The Netherlands; the Research Unit, Sustainability and Global Change of the Centre for Marine and Climate Research, Hamburg University, Germany; and the Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands.

2. Aims

The project is meant to address the limitations of Global Vulnerability Assessments and new challenges for the integration of knowledge and data and accessibility to end-users. It aims at including more realistic scenarios to the assessments by representing the dynamic interactions between natural and social coastal subsystems, and to make the model available to a broad audience. Potential end users include climate negotiators, organizations promoting climate mitigation and adaptation, integrated coastal zone management and the integrated assessment scientific community.

3. Methodology

This approach was applied to produce the DIVA tool (Dynamic and Interactive Vulnerability Assessment) developed to meet the demand for new information on coastal vulnerability from subnational to global levels. It produces quantitative information on a range of coastal impact and adaptation indicators by assessing biophysical and socio-economic consequences of SLR and socio-economic development, taking into account coastal erosion, coastal flooding, wetland change and salinity intrusion into deltas, as well as adaptation in terms of raising dikes and nourishing beaches.

Information produced enables its users to (1) explore the effects of climate change on coastal environments and societies, (2) explore the costs and benefits of coastal adaptation measures, (3) set priorities for

international co‐operation with respect to climate change and development and (4) use results for further scientific and policy analysis.

The DIVA tool comprises 4 main components:

The detailed DIVA database with biophysical and socio-economic coastal data

Global and regionalized sea-level and socio-economic scenarios until the year 2100

An integrated model, consisting of interacting modules that assess biophysical and socio-economic impacts and the potential effects and costs of adaptation.

A graphical user interface for selecting data and scenarios, running model simulations and analyzing the resultsDIVA database has been developed to provide input data for the DIVA tool, since no existing database was suitable for DIVA. It merges data of different types and from various sources to create a consistent and coherent source of information on coastal physical and socio-economic parameters that covers the entire globe.

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The database contains information about 80 biophysical and socio-economic parameters of the world’s coasts. The scenarios that drive the model contain information about SLR, land-use change and socio-economic development (population and economic growth), all of which was derived from the scenarios of the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios. The sea-level scenarios were produced with the climate model of intermediate complexity CLIMBER-2 of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

For each SRES scenario six different sea-level scenarios, assuming three different climate sensitivities, as well as uniform and regionalized SLR, were produced. The model computes the impacts of SLR on natural and human systems, as well as the effects of human adaptation on these impacts.

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the DIVA tool enables its user to choose scenarios and adaptation strategies, to run the model, and to analyze and compare the results for different regions, time steps, scenarios and adaptation strategies and costs.

With the relative sea-level scenarios as input, four types of biophysical impacts are assessed: land loss, flooding, salinity intrusion in river deltas and estuaries, and wetland change. DIVA also assesses the social and economic consequences of these physical impacts, taking into account socio-economic scenarios. Social consequences or impacts are assessed by three indicators: the coastal floodplain population, the people actually flooded and the forced migration. The economic consequences are expressed in terms of damage costs (biophysical and social impacts have been valued) and adaptation costs (beach, tidal and wetland nourishment and dike building). There are three possible adaptation strategies that can be chosen by the users of the model: ‘no adaptation’, ‘constant’ (dikes) or ‘full’ protection (beach, tidal and wetland nourishment) and ‘cost-benefit adaptation’.

4. Links with other projects

The DIVA tool already contributed to a report of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on adaptation options for coastal areas, by Nicholls (2007). It is used within several EU-funded projects such as PESETA, BRANCH, ADAM and CLIMATECOST.

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Databases

1. PSMSL: Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level

http://www.psmsl.org/

The Permanent service for Mean sea Level (PSMSL) data set is the main source of information on long term changes in global sea level during the last two centuries. Established in 1933, it has been responsible for the collection, publication, analysis and interpretation of sea level data from the global network of tide gauges. It is based in Liverpool at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), which is a component of the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Its main activities include (1) providing users with the mean sea level and delayed-mode data sets via the web, together with ancillary information, (2) developing training information, and organizing training courses, for operators of tide gauges and users of their data sets, (3) responding to requests for information from national tide gauge agencies, decision makers (local councils, parliamentary enquiries), the media and general public.

1.1. Links with other programmes

The data have been employed intensively in studies such as those of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In addition to maintaining the global data bank for mean sea level, and jointly acting as the GLOSS Data Archive with the British Oceanographic Data Centre, PSMSL provides services and advice to the international sea level community.

2. GLOSS: Global Sea Level Observing System

http://www.gloss-sealevel.org/

The Global Sea Level Observing System (GLOSS) is an international programme conducted by the Joint Technical Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC). It aims at the establishment of high quality global and regional sea level networks for application to climate, oceanographic and coastal sea level research. The programme became known as GLOSS as it provides data for deriving the 'Global Level of the Sea Surface'.

The main component of GLOSS is the 'Global Core Network' (GCN) of 290 sea level stations around the world for long term climate change and oceanographic sea level monitoring. The Core Network is designed to provide an approximately evenly-distributed sampling of global coastal sea level variations. Another component is the GLOSS Long Term Trends (LTT) set of gauge sites (some, but not all, of which are in the GCN) for monitoring long term trends and accelerations in global sea level. These will be priority sites for Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver installations to monitor vertical land movements, and their data will contribute to long term climate change studies such as those of the IPCC.

The GLOSS Station Handbook was constructed to provide further information on each of the tide gauges in GLOSS core network: http://www.gloss-sealevel.org/station_handbook/

The Handbook includes references to individual countries and organisations who have made their sea level data (hourly values) available. Plots of annual mean sea level are also available for most sites and site maps are provided for many of the stations. Data from GLOSS stations contribute to many sea level data centers and programmes.

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2.1. Links with other programmes

GLOSS was originally proposed in order to improve the quantity and quality of Mean Sea Level data supplied to the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL), and GLOSS continues to perform that function.

MedGLOSS: Mediterranean Network for Systematic Sea-Level Monitoring in the Mediterranean and Black Seas – regional subsystem of GLOSS.

http://medgloss.ocean.org.il/

http://www.ciesm.org/marine/programs/medgloss.htm

MedGLOSS is a subsystem of the GLOSS network. This programme of sea level monitoring network in the Mediterranean and Black seas was established jointly by CIESM and IOC/UNESCO in 1997 in response to the forecasted global climate change and sea level rise.

MedGLOSS major objectives are to (1) detect regional long-term relative and absolute sea-level changes trends and acceleration rates, (2) determine plate tectonic movements in the domain affecting them, by creation of a densified regional GLOSS subsystem network for long-term sea-level monitoring in the Mediterranean and Black Seas consisting of sea-level monitoring stations already active in GLOSS, strengthened by additional operational sea-level stations in a number of countries along the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and with new sea-level stations to be installed on the coasts of countries willing to join MedGLOSS, (3) facilitate the performance of regional studies regarding SLR, water exchange and tectonic movements by providing standardized quality controlled data of high quality, gathered by the network and (4) provide assistance, education and training.

2.2. Links with other programmes:

Since fall 2001 MedGLOSS closely cooperates with the European Sea Level Service (ESEAS) which has very similar objectives.

3. European Sea-Level Service (ESEAS)

It is an international collaboration of organizations in 23 countries that has made the initial step of bringing together the formerly scattered sea level data and research in Europe. ESEAS is developing into a major research infrastructure for all aspects related to sea-level, be it in the field of climate change research, natural hazards or marine research.

World Elevation and Balthymetry dataset (Source: NGDC)

Tidal range (Source: IGBP-LOICZ°

Uplift/subsidence (Source: Peltier, 2000)

Sea level change (Source: CLIMBER)

3.1. DIVA database

Hinkel J. & Klein R.J.T., 2009. Integrating knowledge to assess coastal vulnerability to sea-level rise: the development of the DIVA tool.

Avagianou T.I., Vafeidis A.T. & Koukoulas S., 2008, Assessing the vulnerability to Sea-Level Rise in the Mediterranean, using the DIVA tool:

http://www.medclivar.eu/workshopdocs/presentations/Session5_Avagianou.pdf

http://www.diva-model.net/

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/research/research-domains/transdisciplinary-concepts-and-methods/project-archive/favaia/diva

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Initially developed within a Geographic information System, the DIVA database has been designed inside the DINAS-COAST project (See DINAS-COAST: Dynamic and Interactive Assessment of National, regional and Global Vulnerability of Coastal Zones to SLR to include data on physical, ecological and socio-economic characteristics of the coast at various resolutions and covers all the world’s coastline, excluding Antarctica. It contains information on roughly 80 biophysical and socio-economic parameters of the world’s coasts.

All the data are referenced to linear coastal segments and are expressed as attributes of five main geographic features: coastline segments, administrative units, countries, rivers and tidal basins. As DINAS-COAST is focused on coastal vulnerability, coastal space in the DIVA database has been structured to represent longshore variability in vulnerability. Thus, the coastal segments represent quite homogenous units in terms of potential impacts and vulnerability to SLR. The boundaries of the coastal segments were decided according to a series of physical, administrative and socio-economic parameters.

The DIVA database has a fundamentally different structure to most commonly used global datasets as it has been designed for the needs of coastal vulnerability assessment and in that sense aims to better serve the current information needs and priorities of coastal scientists working in this field.

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