PROTECT - ERSU

Sea-level rise (SLR) is one of the most damaging impacts of climate change, threatening the economy, ecology, and entire existence of coastal regions worldwide. Global-mean sea level has risen by ~8 cm since 1992, with land ice loss and ocean thermal expansion contributing equally. However, the land ice contribution is accelerating, and future SLR is set to become dominated by the highly uncertain behaviour of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. The potential for rapid collapse of these ice sheets, which may already be underway, has made policymakers painfully aware of humanity’s vulnerability to icesheet change. PROTECT will push SLR projections beyond the state-of-the-art and have a long-standing scientific and societal impact by (i) significantly improving our understanding and model representation of ice-sheet processes, (ii) providing a step change in modelling the interactions and feedbacks between atmosphere, ocean, and ice sheets, (iii) improving the robustness of the resulting SLR projections, with a clear propagation of uncertainties from global to regional scales, (iv) assessing the societal implications of high-end ice-sheet SLR over decades to centuries, (v) developing and mentoring the next generation of sea-level scientists. Recognizing that developing climate services for coastal adaptation is an iterative process, PROTECT will engage stakeholder knowledge from key EU states vulnerable to SLR, as well as communities from low-lying islands and the Arctic. PROTECT unifies world-leading European experts in cryospheric and climate science, sea-level change, and coastal and societal impacts. This highly interdisciplinary consortium will cover, for the first time, all relevant spatial and temporal scales governing SLR from land ice. PROTECT will provide the solid evidence base needed to implement measures addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, the European Union Adaptation Strategy, and the UNFCCC Paris Agreement.

WP lead: Contribution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to SLR; Projections of AIS contribution to SLR until 2500 and beyond; assessment of potential for regrowth of collapsed ice sheet