04 June, 2016 by Staff Reporter
On Friday 8 April, 2016, The Antarctic Report hosted a conference in New Zealand's largest city, Auckland, called Sea Level Rise: Implementing Adaptation Strategies. The conference brought together international experts, as well as New Zealand’s leading policy makers, scientists and key industry representatives, to showcase effective adaptation strategies to manage the impact of sea level rise in New Zealand.
As a result of climate change-caused sea level rise, the world will begin to see an increase in extreme weather. The once-in-100-year extreme weather event is predicted to become an annual event even with just modest increases in average sea levels. So what timeframes and rates of increase should we be using to plan for sea level rise? Which areas of NZ are the most at risk? And how can risk mapping be improved?
In the fifth presentation of the conference, Rob Bell, Programme Leader for the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research’s (NIWA) Climate & Hazards Centre, discusses management of coastal-hazard risks, how we should be managing the risk to existing developments and undeveloped land being considered for urban development, and adaptation pathways for coastal communities and infrastructure.
Rob is the Programme Leader for the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research’s (NIWA) Climate & Hazards Centre, coordinating research and consulting activities on frequency/magnitude of weather-related and tsunami hazards and quantifying risk (through the RiskScape project with GNS). He has published papers on sea-level rise and variability, tides and coastal hazards (including tsunami). His latest project was quantifying the national coastal risk exposure in a NIWA report for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment released in November 2015.
Sea Level Rise: Implementing Adaptation Strategies was organised in association with AUT and The Royal Society of New Zealand.
