Transcript Coastal science - issues and potentials

Coastal science –
issues and potentials
Hans von Storch
Institute of Coastal Research
Helmholtz Zentrum Geesthacht
Germany
15-17 September 2015 – Yantai
International Workshop on Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone and Sustainable Development,
Four Seas/四海
The memorandum “Four Seas/四海” was formulated by H. von Storch, Luo Y.
骆永明, Jiang W. 江文胜 and D. Schulz-Bull on the occasion of a Sino-German
Symposium on Coastal Research in October 2014. It was signed by various
colleagues from the two countries.
The title refers to the marine complexes Bohai/Huang Hai and North/Baltic
Sea.
Four Seas/四海
Coasts - that are those parts of the ocean which is significantly influenced by
the neighboring land, be it in terms of currents, winds, temperatures, sea ice,
salinity, suspended matter, specific species anthropogenic substances,
touristic value including aesthetics; but coasts are also that part of the land
which is significantly influenced by the neighboring sea, be it opportunities
for transport, risks related to flooding, tsunamis, storm surges and oil and gas
extraction opportunities for fishing, offshore activity.
Not surprisingly therefore, the science in coastal dynamics and management
extends far beyond oceanography. Certainly oceanography is an important
component of the interdisciplinary mix of scientific efforts dealing with
coasts, but other fields such as coastal engineering, land use planning and
management, freshwater hydrology and ecology, climate, sociology and
cultural science are also needed for constructing holistic views of the subject
of coasts.
Four Seas/四海
What makes the issue of coasts special is not only the presence of the
“other” counterpart, i.e., the sea versus land and land versus sea, but also
the presence of a often dominant factor modifying or even constructing
the coast - humans who use the coasts in various ways, conditional upon
temporally and culturally varying preferences, who make use of
opportunities and try to deal with often great dangers.
Because of both, the culturally conditioned values and preferences, and
the different geophysical, morphological and ecological set up, the various
coasts of this world are very different, face very different challenges, risks
and opportunities. As a consequence coastal science is a fragmented into
regional research communities; in some regions coastal sciences
considered a mere variant of oceanography, and others it is essentially
coastal engineering, and in others human geography.
Four Seas/四海
The challenge is to bring these different communities, disciplines, challenges
and concepts together, not only within the scientific community but also in
a trans-disciplinary effort by bringing together the real world, in which the
coast is subject to competing practices and decisions, with the body of
scientific knowledge.
What is expected from science as a societal service is left to societies – they fund this
social activity “science”. Within a certain mandate given by society, scientists develop their
services.
Science, knowledge, and utillity
This mandate may be different in different societies, but the joint element would be that
science generates knowledge (Wissenschaft) with the scientific method (a.k. Merton).
This knowledge aims at best explanations of complex phenomena, consistent with the
presently available overall knowledge.
Scientifically constructed knowledge is considered superior to culturally constructed
knowledge because of the scientific method, not because of the utility. However, socially
constructed knowledge is closer to societal preferences; it leads in most cases to wanted
societal conclusions; this is often not so with scientifically constructed.
Thus, good scientific results are not always useful, but in many cases they may be or may
become so. The issue is to identify those capabilities and knowledges, which may be
useful.
Here, I present a series of such potentially useful areas – all from the Institute of Coastal
Research of Helmholtz Zentrum Geesthacht, and touch upon the circumstances which
allow the potential usefulness transform into real utility.
Obviously, these cases do not span the full range of coastal science.
Issues in Coastal Research with the potential of
societal utility:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Making Sense
Marine Spatial Planning (MSP)
Monitoring
Hazards, Risks and Opportunities
Scenarios
More …
Based upon:
von Storch, H., K. Emeis, I. Meinke, A. Kannen, V. Matthias, B. W. Ratter, E. Stanev,
R. Weisse and K. Wirtz, 2015: Making coastal research useful - cases from practice.
Oceanologica 57, 3-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.oceano.2014.09.001
Making sense refers to the scientific understanding of complex
phenomena, and its use for supporting societal framing and decision making.
Examples are consequences of eutrophication, the manifestation of natural
system variations, and anthropogenic climate change.
Novel or recurrent but threatening events in complex coastal environments can
attract considerable attention in stakeholder groups and the public. Meaningproviding frames, which allow for causal interpretation and understanding,
satisfy not only curiosity, but allow for engineering preparedness and options for
specific stakeholders.
Making sense
What is the process behind the marked increase of storm surge heights in Hamburg
since the 1970s?
Storm surges as recorded at the tide gauge St Pauli in Hamburg. The green horizontal bars indicate
stipulated dike heights. Dike failures are marked by red stars. The color codes mark surge heights. Data
provided by Gabriele Gönnert.
Consistency of recent local change:
Storm surges in Hamburg
Difference betwenn peak heights of storm
surges in Cuxhaven and Hamburg
Main cause for recently elevated
storm surges in Hamburg is the
modification of the river Elbe –
(coastal defense and shipping
channel deepening) and less so
because of changing storms or sea
level.
von Storch, H. and K. Woth, 2008: Storm surges, perspectives and
options. Sustainability Science 3, 33-44
Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) describes the “public
process of analyzing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of
human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological, economic and social
objectives that have been specified through a political process”.
MSP is an approach for deciding about competitive concepts of usage of coastal
space. This process needs mostly quantitative information from natural sciences
for project-specific technical planning exercises, but in addition social science
needs to provide mainly qualitative information concerning societal and political
context and structures to inform decision makers in strategic planning.
Coastal science is not doing MSP as such, but in research in conditions of how to
implement MSP.
Monitoring aims at the assessment of the current status of the
coastal environment and short term trends, and their (deterministic) short-term
forecasts.
Such assessments are based on observations and related (model-guided) data
analysis. The process of making data, assessments and forecasts available for
users is also a challenge.
Coastal science is not doing the routine of monitoring as such, but in research on
how to implement the process of monitoring.
Enabling Monitoring
How can we mix dynamical and empirical knowledge
about surface currents in the German Bight?
Comparison of HF radar determined surface currents with an analysis using STOI, and
a simulation with the same dynamical model, which is used in STOI, but without constraint with HF data.
A snapshot in time of the 2-current field.
A time series of radial velocities at a grid-point. (Stanev et al., 2014)
hazards, risks and
opportunities are needed for almost any kind of onshore and
Assessments of
offshore operation.
An important component of this activity is the determination of ongoing longterm changes. For the assessment of negative outlooks and positive
perspectives comprehensive and homogeneous data are needed.
The situation is particularly challenging, when too short, too fragmented or only
inhomogeneous observed data are available. Then, sometimes, model-derived
estimates can be used.
Hazards, risks and opportunities
How much of the lead, which was added to gasoline has ended up in the Baltic Sea?
Estimated annual depositions of lead into the Baltic Sea (black curve) plus estimated depositions derived from a
number of limited observations. (von Storch et al., 2003)
Some applications of
- Ship design
- Navigational safety
- Offshore wind
- Interpretation of measurements
- Oils spill risk and chronic oil
pollution
- Ocean energy
- Scenarios of storm surge conditions
- Scenarios of future wave conditions
Currents Power [W/m2]
Wave Energy Flux [kW/m]
Scenarios, differently to forecasts, address questions of the type
“What may happen, if … and nothing else”.
Such projections provide a useful outlook for assessing consequences of
possible future developments and uncertainties. Therefore scenarios have
become increasingly popular in various scientific and decision making contexts.
Scenarios
How may ocean wave statistics change at the end of the century (2071-2100),
compared to “today” (1961-2990)?
climate change signals (CCS) of significant
wave height (m, long-term 99 percentiles)
isolines: long-term 99
percentiles of reference period
A2_E
A2_H
A1B_1C
A1B_2C
B2_E
B2_H
B1_1C
B1_2C
- general pattern: increase of HS from W / NW to E / SE; often decrease of HS in the N and W parts
- differences in both magnitude and details of spatial patterns
Grabemann, pers. Comm.
Nordsee
Insel
Watt
Marsch
Marsch
1 km
Hauptdeich
Überflutbarer Deich
Eingedeichte Marsch
Überflutbare Marsch
Brack- und Süßwasser
Kompaktsiedlung
Wohnhügel (Warft/Wurt)
Hausboot
Karsten Reise, pers. comm.
Science-Stakeholder exchange
Science-stakeholder interaction …
… entails not only information
provision and contextualization of
research findings, but also a selfreflection of the scientific actors.
Science-stakeholder interaction
becomes multifaceted and
complicated.
Social and cultural science
knowledge is urgently needed for a
successful participation of science in
the process of advising decision
making.
How strongly do you employ the following
sources of information, for deciding about
issues related to climate adaptation?
Regional administrators in German Baltic Sea
coastal regions.
Two different construction of „climate change“
– scientific and cultural – which is more powerful?
Cultural: „Klimakatastrophe“
Temperature
Scientific: man-made change is real, can be mitigated
to some extent but not completely avoided
Lund and Stockholm
Storms
Regional climate service
An institution set up to enable communication between science and
stakeholders
• that is: making sure that science understands the questions and concerns of
a variety of stakeholders
• that is: making sure that the stakeholders understand the scientific
assessments and their limits.
Provision of stakeholders with relevant knowledge, information and data
about regional climate change, its perspectives and probable causes
Regional climate service comprises …
1.
Building a dialogue with public and deciders
2.
Dealing with the issues of
- present change (consistency with scenarios)
- perspectives (projections vs. predictions)
- reality of culturally constructed knowledge about climate, climate change
and
climate impact
- confusion because of differently used terminology
- discrimination between legitimate scientific knowledge and politically
motivated knowledge claims
- post-normal conditioning of climate research
3.
Provision of
- robust (homogeneous) data
- robust knowledge about recent, ongoing and possible future climate
change.
von Storch, H. and I. Meinke, 2008: Regional climate offices and regional
assessment reports needed. Nature geosciences 1 (2), 78
The Institute of Coastal Research (IfK) of HZG was confronted with knowledge
needs on the side of decision takers (administration, companies) and the
regional public – concerning coastal climate issues (mostly storm surges,
storms, waves).
The effort for transferring knowledge is challenged by:.
• Knowledge is capacity to understand and act, is not access to information.
• The science-policy/public interaction is not an issue of the linear model of
demand & supply. The „empty vessel“-model of knowledge transfer is
flawed.
• Scientific(ally constructed) knowledge does not necessarily “win” the
competition with alternative knowledge systems.
As a consequence, we built a cooperation with social scientists, set up the
dialogue platform „Norddeutsches Klimabüro“ in 2006, established Mini-IPCC
reports for mapping the available scientifically legitimate knowledge about
regional climate, and developed suitable information provision systems.
A tools for regional climate servicing: con/dis-sensus reports:
Assessments of knowledge about regional climate change
- for the recent past (200 years), for present change and
possible future change
- consensus of what is scientifically documented
- documentation of contested issues.
for
+ Baltic Sea (BACC) – BACC I in 2008, II in 2015)
+ Hamburg region (#1 November 2010; #2 just initiated)
+ North Sea (in final phase)
+ BOHCC (Bo Hai, Yellow Sea region; first steps taken)
Full reports and condensed reports for general public.
Reckermann, M., H.-J. Isemer and H. von Storch,
2008: Climate Change Assessment for the Baltic
Sea Basin. EOS Trans. Amer. Geophys. U., 161-162
Coastal research deals with that part of the sea, which is significantly affected by the
land, and the part of the land, which is significantly affected by the sea. Coasts are in
most cases densely populated, and the activities of people are shaping and changing
the land/seascape of the coast. Thus, coast encompasses the coastal sea, the coastal
land, coastal flora and fauna, and people. Since peoples’ economic and political
preferences change and compete, the human impact on the coast changes is contested
and subject to societal decision making processes.
While some coastal research can help informing and constraining such decisions, many
legitimate scientific efforts have little bearing on society.
All decision making processes are political, so that scientific knowledge is not the
dominant driver in such processes.
Using cases from the Institute of Coastal Research of Helmholtz Zentrum Geesthacht,
we described some of these potentially useful parts of science, and touched upon the
circumstances which allow the potential usefulness transform into real utility. These
cases do not span the full range of coastal science.