Preparing, protecting: Putting Sea Level Science to Work

Working the boundary between pure science and its practical application is more than a full-time job for Laura Engeman of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. It’s a much-needed response to changing conditions. Engeman helps connect sea level scientists with coastal managers, and she also specializes in translating technical language and concepts into terms that are more accessible – and useful – to planners and stakeholders. These specialists must assess future risk of climate change and sea level rise to coastal infrastructure and decide how best to protect it – and they need reliable, understandable information. Engeman says demands on her time only seem to be increasing as threats to coastlines, in California and around the world, become more clear.

How would you sum up your current work?

My title is “climate resilience specialist.” I work at the boundary between academic research and the communities that are looking for how to integrate or use that research in their day-to-day lives. Part of my job is to take the pulse of what these communities might be struggling with – topics like when flooding is likely to start occurring more often and how they can best do risk management for hazards that are uncertain.

The other part of my job is to work with researchers both within my institution at Scripps, as well as other institutions across California and the nation. Sometimes I’ll help co-design a research collaboration that helps to meet that science gap the communities need. Other times I focus on synthesizing multiple research results to explain the state of the science or create a tool or visualization product that makes the science more accessible to end users.

I am also thinking about the educational aspect of sea level rise: how science material can be a little bit more public-friendly. That work is starting now with informal educators, the people who work in ocean education centers, natural history museums, aquariums. The goal is to expand sea level rise education resources, and this is funded by the NASA Science Activation Program.

How do you describe your work with the NASA Sea Level Change Team?

I’m a member of the [N-SLCT Practitioner Consultation] Board. I contribute some strategic thoughts about how current sea level research may be useful for those coastal communities trying to be prepared. Sometimes I help develop plans into 50 to 100-year futures – how to synthesize those results, and what is relevant to disseminate to those stakeholders. General ice-sheet-melting research is not necessarily super digestible; how it contributes to more significant sea level rise at the latter end of the century is what we care about. I offer suggestions on how that can be communicated and disseminated. I also have worked on providing input on NASA tools, such as the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] projection tool for U.S. national sea level rise and the new high-tide flooding tools. I then share those tools with my network of practitioners. I’m working hand-in-hand with communities on sea level rise planning to help gather feedback they have on all those tools and to distribute that back up to NASA. What’s great about the board is that people come from different departments, different aspects of the country. What they’re interested in isn’t always the same.

Please tell us a little more about your network of practitioners.

I am part of several regional and local networks in California that are about collective learning about sea level rise adaptation and planning. I often sponsor webinars, come up with suggested topics, bring in speakers to help. We can get over 100 participants.

For example, I support a regional sea level rise working group that is made up of entities across San Diego County: transportation, wildlife, cities, the Navy, the military, the port. At their meetings, I make linkages between the science that’s coming out and what that means for sea level rise risk and adaptation planning. I am also affiliated with California Sea Grant and the national Sea Grant network, which work with communities to understand and plan for sea level rise risks. We also share models for how to integrate sea level rise science into local adaptation planning and projects.

What is one of the main points you try to make with stakeholders?

Increasingly I feel like it is important to communicate the near-term and mid-term rate of acceleration of sea level rise. There has been an emphasis on what is happening at the end of the century, which is understandable. However, with better regional sea level rise information, we now have a set of future ranges for 2050-2080 with a bit more certainty. Many places in the U.S., especially California, have experienced a fairly slow rate of sea level rise so far. It’s tougher for people to understand that rate is going to increase. They think of it in a linear way, and it’s not linear. The hardest thing for people to tangibly integrate into their hazard planning for the future is that it’s going to increase in a very quick fashion.

For us on the West Coast, even small increments of sea level rise are a big deal. Extreme events that can be quite damaging to the coast will occur more often as higher sea levels combine with high tides and coastal storms. The ability to recover and respond will be challenging.

The other threat that we’re really starting to understand more is an incremental increase in nuisance flooding – also known as “sunny day” floods. They’re starting to ramp up more, and we’re seeing the impact. These are not necessarily big flood events, but they are happening more frequently and starting to eat away at our coastline. We need to rely on more regular shoreline health checks – where we are in terms of flooding frequency, sea level rise rates – and satellites and tide gauges can help us to track these things.

How do you explain the threat of sea level rise to coastal communities when speaking to non-experts?

It’s important to understand sea level rise in the context of the bigger climate change threat. It can be difficult for people to look further out, to understand that threat. And the pathway we’re on is so dependent on [future emissions].

There’s a tendency to sensationalize in the media about how everything is going to be underwater, what is going to be lost, in the more extreme potential futures for sea level rise. But I think oftentimes it’s lost on people that there is still something they can actually do about it. We haven’t hit that tipping point yet. We don’t have to think about five and six feet of inundation. We can visualize chronic, repetitive erosion and flooding of the coastline, the losses that will come from this. Really, that is what is going to happen in most of their lifetimes. So I talk about what resilience means for the shoreline, and how sea level rise will increasingly threaten the ability of our coast and communities to respond and recover.