Interagency Sea Level Rise Scenario Tool
For more information on the interagency technical report and its key takeaways, please view an explainer video at coast.noaa.gov.
The Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flood Hazard Scenarios and Tools Interagency Task Force was jointly convened at the direction of the White House Resilience Council, in 2015, under the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), the Subcommittee on Ocean Sciences and Technology (SOST), and the National Ocean Council (NOC). This was in recognition of the strong need and demand for authoritative, consistent, accessible sea level rise and associated coastal hazard information for the entire U.S. coastline, coordinated across the relevant Federal agencies, to serve as a starting point for on-the-ground coastal preparedness planning and risk management activities. The goal of the Task Force, since its inception, has been to develop the necessary products through sustained and coordinated participation of key agencies, based on the best available science, including regional science and expertise when possible and appropriate. A goal has also been to incorporate those products into user-friendly mapping, visualization, and analysis tools made easily accessible through existing agency portals serving specific partners and stakeholders, as well as interagency venues such as the National Climate Assessment (NCA), the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit, and others. One of the main outputs of the Task Force are Technical reports providing future sea level information for the coastlines of the U.S. The first of these technical reports was released in 2017 with a recent update and new Technical Report in 2022.
The most recent sea level rise scenarios and supporting information from the 2022 Task Force report titled "Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States: Updated Mean Projections and Extreme Water Level Probabilities Along U.S. Coastlines" are provided in this tool. This tool delivers the sea level scenarios that have been updated using information from the IPCC 6th Assessment Report. Unlike the IPCC, the focus of the report and this tool is the coastal extent of the United States. There are five sea level scenarios, defined by target values of Global Mean Sea Level Rise in 2100. These are defined as follows: Low (0.3 m), Intermediate Low (0.5 m), Intermediate (1 m), Intermediate High (1.5 m) and High (2 m). The sea level scenarios are provided at individual tide gauge locations as well as on a 1-degree grid. Regionally averaged scenarios are also provided for several different coastal regions around the U.S. Where available, observation extrapolations using tide gauges from 2020-2050 are also provided for comparison to the scenarios globally, regionally and locally. The underlying data used in the tool and report can also be accessed and downloaded.
In addition to creating this tool, the NASA Sea Level Change Team (N-SLCT) contributed lead authorship and technical input into the 2022 Technical Report. In particular, the updated scenarios and observational extrapations were produced through efforts of the N-SLCT.
For more info on the Task Force, the technical report, the scenarios and how they were created: What are the scenarios from the Sea Level Rise Interagency Task Force and how do they compare to the projections from the IPCC AR6?
This tool and associated content was also reviewed by scientists and practitioners from NOAA, NOAA Sea Grant and the N-SLCT Practitioner Consultation Board. Their feedback was collected and their suggestions were implemented to improve the representation and delivery of the information contained in the technical report.