CIG Project Finalist for International Competition Honoring Science Breakthroughs

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A project led by Dr. Heidi Roop, formerly the strategic communications lead at the Climate Impacts Group and now assistant professor of climate science at the University of Minnesota, is a finalist for Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year. The project combines data visualizations and virtual reality to illustrate the impacts of sea level rise in South Seattle. Heidi started the project, which was funded by an EarthLab Innovation Grant, while working for the Climate Impacts Group.

As a finalist for “Falling Walls,” Heidi created a five-minute video describing her project and its impact. The video features Heidi responding to prompts ranging from: “Introduce your science engagement initiative in one sentence” and “How does society benefit from your initiative?” to “What did you want to become as a child?” The video guest stars Heidi’s eight-month-old daughter.

The “Falling Walls” competition received more than 900 submissions from 111 countries. Heidi’s video is one of 15 submissions in the “science engagement” category. One finalist from each of the ten categories, including “science engagement,” will be recognized at the Falling Walls Grand Finale on November 9.

New Guide from the Washington Coastal Resilience Project Helps Coastal Planners Use the Latest Sea Level Rise Data

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IN BRIEF:

  • The Washington Coastal Resilience Project team — a collaboration between the state’s Department of Ecology, the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group and Washington Sea Grant — are releasing How to Choose, a guide to support the use of available sea level rise data in coastal planning and decision making.
  • The authors of this guide led a webinar on July 21, 2020 to provide an overview of the guide, discuss a case study and lead a Q & A period.

Fostering resilience to rising seas requires more than sea level rise projections alone. Coastal decision makers are faced with questions datasets can’t answer, such as, “Do I need to plan for what the coastline will look like in 20 years, 50 or 100? What level of risk am I willing to take given the problem I’m facing?”

Since publishing the report, Sea Level Rise in Washington State – A 2018 Assessment, members of the Coastal Resilience Project team have received ongoing inquiries from residents, local governments and other experts about how to use the data. Their new guide, How to Choose, will help coastal planners, engineers, climate adaptation specialists and other decision makers understand the various sea level rise data subsets and how to use them to make sound decisions for their particular project and community.

The guide will help users make three critical choices when using sea level rise data: selecting an appropriate time frame, weighing the probabilities of different sea level rise projections against the risk, and choosing whether to consider projections that assume a high or low level of future greenhouse gas emissions.

“Decision makers are working to ensure our coastal communities and habitats are not just functional and vibrant now, but will continue to be for decades to come,” Crystal Raymond, lead author of the paper and climate adaptation specialist at the Climate Impacts Group, says. “Improving access to sea level rise data can help them in this vital work.”

The guide is part of a suite of resources developed by the Coastal Resilience team. It is designed to accompany the sea level rise data visualization, developed by the Climate Impacts Group and Tableau and released in 2019, and other resources located on the Washington Coastal Hazards Resilience Network website.

“Our goal is to get the right tools and knowledge into the hands of local and state practitioners to help them move the dial on coastal community resilience,” says report author Nicole Faghin, a coastal management specialist at Washington Sea Grant. “This guide along with the sea level rise data visualization gets us farther down the road.”

Read How to Choose.

How to Choose is part of the Washington Coastal Resilience Project, a three-year effort funded in 2016 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The project was led by the Washington State Department of Ecology and Washington Sea Grant with partner UW Climate Impacts Group. Funding was provided by NOAA Regional Coastal Resilience Grants Program, grant #NA16NOS4730015.

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Washington Sea Grant, based at the University of Washington, provides statewide marine research, outreach, and education services, helping people understand and address the challenges facing our ocean and coasts. The National Sea Grant College Program is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.
www.wsg.washington.edu.

Since 1995, the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group has worked closely with federal, tribal, state, and other partners across the Pacific Northwest to prepare for and manage the local impacts of a changing climate. CIG is widely recognized for scientific discovery and as an experienced creator of impartial and actionable science.
www.cig.uw.edu 

 

 

 

The future could look a lot like this year’s flood season

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CIG Director Amy Snover is quoted in this article on recent flooding along the Snoqualmie River. “There will be no normal until we stop increasing greenhouse gas emissions, until we stop increasing the problem, Amy says. “These changes aren’t just removed, happening to some other part of the world.” CIG’s 2020 report on how climate change is affecting Earth’s oceans and frozen regions is referenced.

New report describes anticipated climate-change effects in WA State

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CIG Director Amy Snover was interviewed for this blog post summarizing CIG’s recent Snowlines and Shorelines report. “That’s the happy secret of climate change,” Amy says. “There is more happening than most people know. That being said, it isn’t really enough. It’s just the beginning, and a lot more needs to be done.”

CIG releases report on effects of human activity on the ocean and cryosphere

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Drawing on recent data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as research from the Climate Impacts Group, this brief provides an overview of the importance of the ocean and the cryosphere (Earth’s frozen regions), how they are being affected by human activity and what we stand to lose if we don’t act now.