Climate Monitoring
Everything is in motion. After the Ice Age, the land generally rises, and climate changes cause the sea around us to rise faster and faster. Additionally, the landscape locally sinks in several places—not least in the vulnerable low-lying coastal areas, where there are significant values to protect—such as infrastructure, buildings, and, in the worst case, animals and human lives.
Climate Challenges
Climate challenges can roughly be divided into two—the daily and future problems with a generally rising sea level combined with local subsidence, which will pose significant hydraulic challenges for existing drainage systems and waterways.
The second problem will be the destructive extremes with strong storms, high sea levels, and precipitation combined with high groundwater levels. Fortunately, we are still affected by the land uplift after the Ice Age, and in the northern part of the country, it mitigates the effect of the sea-level rise. However, this does not change the fact that land and water are approaching each other at an increasingly faster pace, and the whole country is relatively heading into the sea.
Investment in Climate Adaptation
When investing in climate adaptation, it is important to consider land movements and sea-level rise, including extreme sea levels from the updated High Water Statistics by the Coastal Directorate. General land uplift and sea levels are measured in about 80 harbors for use in storm surge warnings.
However, local subsidence is often overlooked in flood scenarios, even though they can be greater than the current sea-level rise. Even small subsidence can have a significant effect over time, for example, over 50 or 100 years. Therefore, future climate investments should include mapping of local land movements using satellite data. Space can help create updated terrain models, which, along with water level measurements and high water statistics, provide a solid basis for local/regional climate adaptation investments.
We can provide accurate datasets and models that can help with:
An updated basis for decisions regarding climate investments in the short and long term
A significant savings through documented needs-based investment
Creating peace of mind for citizens so they can sleep soundly at night, even when the storm rages
An Investment in Climate Adaptation
According to the UN's climate panel, the sea level is expected to rise between 40 and 120 cm by 2100. An uncertainty of at least 80 cm will have enormous consequences for the size of the investments. Therefore, it is essential to continuously monitor developments and combine new data with historical and existing time series.
This will enable the development of new valid models that can form the foundation for investments to have the desired level of security against future floods. Nationally, investments in climate adaptation are expected to be in the tens of billions.
