Adapting to Uncertainty: Managing Risk Amid Rising Seas
Robert E. Kopp, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Rutgers University
Abstract: Sea-level rise provides a well-suited case study for thinking about the complexities of climate risk and its management. On the one hand, sea-level change is in some ways simpler than many climate hazards: it is incontrovertible that the oceans will rise as the planet warms and that this will cause increasingly frequent coastal flooding. Along almost all inhabited coastlines, there is no uncertainty associated with the direction of sea-level change. On the other hand, many adaptations to sea-level rise involve decisions with lifetimes of many decades to over a century. For example: Where and how should transportation, water, and electric infrastructure be built in coastal areas? Where should protective structures, like seawalls, be built? What sort of construction should be allowed where? And where does government need to encourage and help households relocate? On these generational timescales, scientific and socioeconomic uncertainties – for example regarding how sensitive ice sheets will be to a warming planet and when humankind will achieve net-zero carbon emissions – are central. Yet key uncertainties are ‘ambiguities’ – researchers do not agree on how to project them, and even disagree on the significance of some of the key processes involved. In this talk, I will lay out the scientific, economic and policy challenges arising from sea-level rise and its uncertainties.
Biography: Robert Kopp is a climate scientist who serves at Rutgers University as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences. He directs the Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub, a National Science Foundation-funded consortium that advances coastal climate adaptation and the scientific understanding of natural and human coastal climate dynamics. He is also a director of the Climate Impact Lab, a non-profit research organization supporting data-driven approaches to estimating the social and human costs of climate change. Professor Kopp’s research focuses on past and future sea-level change, the interactions between physical climate change and the economy, the use of climate risk information to inform decision-making, and the role of higher education in supporting societal climate risk management. He is a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent (2021) Sixth Assessment Report and a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.