Ice sheet and climate interaction - Implications for Coastal Engineering

A collaborative multidisciplinary workshop, funded by the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN), held in June 2012 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, focused on understanding the extent and distribution of future sea-level rise (SLR) to inform appropriate adaptation and coastal engineering responses.
The resolution of our current understanding of future SLR is hindered by inadequate understanding of ice-sheet responses to climate change. The resultant glacio-isostatic adjustment (GIA) due to ice-sheet responses is the dominant effect on the extent and spatial distribution of SLR. This workshop brings together observational scientists and modellers of ice-sheet change with GIA modellers and coastal engineers in order to define observational constraints on future SLR and assess local needs for engineering responses (e.g. defensive walls, managed retreat) in the next 20 to 30 years. Our aim is to define clear questions for fundable multidisciplinary collaborations. This synthesis meeting engages the already diverse academics from the PALSEA project (initially funded by WUN), which aims to better understand future SLR and adaptation responses, with experts in coastal engineering and
management for the first time. The broad PALSEA group includes five Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) contributing authors and so this workshop informs the IPCC process for the Assessment Report (AR) #5 and early planning for AR#6.