Climate Change and Sea Level: A Challenge to Science and Society


About this page
On Climate and Sea Level
Challenge to Society
Challenge to Science
The Science
Decision Support
Sea Level Forecasting
Policy Making for Adaptation
Comments from Others
Papers
Plag (2010), AGU 2010
Plag et al. (2009), OceanObs09
Plag (2009), ISRSE
Presentations
Climate and Sea level
Sea-level related workshops, blogs, etc
Connecting Delta Cities, New York, June 9-10, 2009 (Flyer, Program)
Climate Change in the Adriatic, Venice, Oct. 27-29, 2008
Examples
Florida
Bangladesh
Venice

About this page

On this web site on sea level changes, I provide input to the discussion on sea level changes, the potential impact, and the development and implementation of mitigation and adaptation strategies. Sea level is certainly the physical quantity that has dominated and continues to dominate my work as a scientist, and the contents of these pages are based on my work of more than 30 years. In recent years, I have been involved in several assessments of future sea level changes in densely populated coastal zones. These assessments have helped me to develop a broad understanding of the scientific, societal, cultural, economic, and environmental issues relevant for the development of resilient coastal zones ready to adopt to changing sea levels.

On these pages I comment on the challenges that sea level changes pose to society and to science. I layout the science of sea level changes. I discuss the contribution of science to the societal discourse about mitigation and adaptation and the science support for implementation. I also comment on the responsibilities of decision makers, and how they might or might not rely on science input for their decision process.