Toward a broad scale climate service for coastal adaptation to sea-level rise in Europe: the CoCliCo project.

Climate change and coastal development have pushed European coastal zones to a critical threshold, making urgent adaptation decisions essential. Climate services can support decision makers addressing this challenge by delivering science-based information about present days and future coastal risks due to marine flooding and sea-level rise. The European funded CoCliCo project demonstrates the feasibility of a pre-operational, broad-scale climate service considering extreme climate events aimed at supporting adaptation to sea-level rise. This core service, developed through CoCliCo, is designed to inform key users—including European and national authorities, city planners, and critical infrastructure owners—of the broad-scale risks they face. To complement this broad scale core service, downstream, user-specific services, such as high-resolution hazard and risk assessments for various adaptation options can be developed, using locally available data and models alongside CoCliCo’s broad-scale information. Research conducted through CoCliCo shows that this layered, scalable model of climate services has the potential to be expanded, including through additional climate services addressing broader challenges, including biodiversity conservation, ecosystem restoration, and resilience-focused development. While climate services are an important enabler of coastal adaptation, they cannot replace actual decisions made by public authorities and private businesses and stakeholders.