SPP 1889 Sea Level Conference

Regional Sea Level Change and Societal Impacts

Hamburg,

Jun 5 – 7, 2023

An international conference on regional sea-level change and societal impacts will be held in Hamburg, Germany, between June 5 and 7, 2023. The conference will be hosted by the DFG-funded priority program 1889 on sea level and will also involve members of the international sea level community. The conference will take place in the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg (https://www.hamburg.com/museums/11750292/immh/).

Sea-level rise is an existential threat to coastal residents around the world as it progressively raises water levels, promoting increased flooding, erosion, salinization, and ecosystem loss and degradation. Small islands, deltas, and coastal cities are particularly threatened. Unmitigated climate change will lead to rapid acceleration, with a meter of rise by 2100 appearing likely and larger rises possible. The climate mitigation and temperature stabilization targets agreed in the Paris Agreement will slow, but will not stop climate-induced sea-level rise due to the long timescales of ocean and ice sheet response to warming. Hence, identifying adaptation measures required by vulnerable coastal communities is important. 

The conference will feature a conversation between scientists from around the world and will include agencies and decision makers from the two study regions (northern Europe and Indonesian Throughflow/western Pacific) to bridge science and society. The conference comes one year after the WCRP sea level conference held in Singapore in 2022. It will critically assess sea-level change in the two study regions, to understand their likely magnitudes under the range of possible emissions over the 21^st century and beyond. The conference will assess the current understanding of these challenges and possible actions and approaches required in both regions. Given the critical need for coastal adaptation, it will also consider how to effectively make sea level rise information available and most useful to the coastal policymakers and practitioners engaged in risk assessment and adaptation, drawing on contributions from practitioners engaged in adaptation planning today.

The conference will be by invitation only for up to 100 people and will provide an opportunity to share the present status and future of climate-related sea-level research, with a strong focus on the application of sea-level science for adaptation and stakeholder needs.

Scientific Program Committee: Boris Braun, Jochen Hinkel, Jürgen Kusche, Johannes Herbeck, Monika Rhein, Rapti Siriwardane, Gerd Schmiedl, Detlef Stammer, Nassos Vafeidis,

Local Organizing Committee: Zeinab Azarakhsh, Sri Nandini Weiss, Detlef Stammer, Chathurika Wickramage, Jin Yi,