Special issue  

The main objective of this special issue on "Monitoring and modelling to guide coastal adaptation to extreme storm events in a changing climate" is to bring together research with the same interest in providing science based decision support for effective adaptation to the consequences of storm impacts both now and under future climate scenarios at the coast.

Storms across the globe and their associated consequences in the coastal zone (flooding and erosion), combined with the long-term geomorphic evolution of our coastlines, are a threat to life and assets, both economical and environmental. In a changing climate with a rising global sea level and potentially increased storminess (or at least changing patterns of storm tracks) the future risk of coastal storm impacts is likely to increase. Coastal managers and policy makers therefore need to make effective and timely decisions on the use of resources for the immediate and longer term. A clearer picture of what may happen in the future will enable coastal communities and industries to adapt effectively to a changing coastal environment to sustain resilience over the long-term. Two aims of the current research community to help achieve this goal are to:

- assess and provide levels of probability on the impacts of climate change at the coast - increase our understanding of the consequence of extreme storm impacts to help provide evidence-based policy advice

To enable regional-scale and long-term study of the changing patterns within a coastal system, modelling approaches are often adopted. However, for the projections to be credible the monitoring of different coastal types is required to determine their validity, constrain the uncertainty in model predictions, and identify important processes and interactions that need to be captured within numerical or conceptual models.

Multidisciplinary research and stakeholder engagement is necessary to ensure improved understanding of coastal storm impacts is translated into effective planning for societal benefit. This session therefore welcomes research focused on monitoring and/or modelling extreme events to improve future coastal resilience from all fields of study and the end user community.