Climate information tailored for the German coast provided by the DAS core service – the example of regional sea level projections

The DAS core service “Climate and Water” provides monitoring and projection data to evaluate requirements for climate change adaptation, which were defined through the German Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change (Deutsche Anpassungsstrategie - DAS).

Sea level rise (SLR) is an inevitable consequence of climate change and leads to an increased risk of flooding, erosion, and infrastructure damage in low-lying and vulnerable areas. This increase will therefore require adaptive strategies for mitigation along the coasts.

To support adaptation efforts, we provide high-resolution projections of relative sea level change, optimized specifically for the Northern European Coastal Region (‘DASNordicSLR’).

Most drivers of sea level change operate on a continental or global scale, but vertical land motion is a regional phenomenon — especially significant in northern Europe — driven by glacial isostatic adjustment and localized geological processes.

The sea level projections from IPCC 6th Assessment Report (AR6) were therefore optimized for this specific region by changing the vertical land motion component to an elevation model created for Fennoscandia by the Nordic Geodetic commission (NKG).

A subset of these SLR projections for only the German North and Baltic Seas is available via the “DAS Climate Data Coast” application (https://das.bsh.de). Additionally, projections for multiple oceanographic variables, such as sea surface temperature, sea surface salinity or extreme water levels, based on a small ensemble of regional ocean climate simulations are presented and can be easily visualised for the entire area and multiple stations along the coast.