How should we communicate sea level rise uncertainty in assessment reports?

A partial figure from the new paper showing committed sea level rise by warming and time, and milestones. Credit: doi:10.1038/s41558-023-01691-8

Mitigating the effects of sea-level rise is complicated by the uncertainty involved in projecting future impacts. It is particularly difficult to characterize ambiguity that arises when scientists do not know or cannot agree on important relationships within a system or the probability of certain elements. Communicating this ambiguity to decision makers effectively is key to developing quality coastal adaptation policies. A new review paper, partially supported by the Climate Program Office’s Climate Variability & Predictability (CVP) Program, focuses on scientific assessment reports to examine how uncertainty and ambiguity have been represented in the past, and highlights key ways to communicate these topics to coastal decision makers.