Ask most people how fast sea level is rising, and they will quote a single number: a few millimetres a year, creeping up steadily since satellites started watching the oceans in the early 1990s. It is a tidy story. It is also, for anyone who actually lives on a coast, almost beside the point.
A new review led by Anny Cazenave, geodesist, satellite-altimetry pioneer, and a former ISSI Director herself, pulls together decades of work by an ISSI International Team to make an uncomfortable but important argument: the global average hides almost everything that matters locally. Coastal sea level does not follow the open ocean’s gentle upward line; it lurches, wobbles, and sometimes free-falls, shaped by a crowd of processes that rarely get invited into the headline number.
A diverse group of scientists has gathered at ISSI for the workshop “Opening up Earth Observations for Climate Adaptation”, convened by the My Climate Risk Lighthouse Activity of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP).
The meeting brings together satellite remote-sensing experts, climate scientists, modellers, social scientists, philosophers, and data practitioners from across the globe. Participants span a wide range of scientific backgrounds and career stages, working on global, regional and local climate impacts, inclusivity, and shaping the global Earth observation (EO) landscape. Their geographic diversity is equally notable, with contributors from Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific, reflecting the truly global nature of the challenge.
We are pleased to feature a new and timely Perspective paper: “Earth observations for climate adaptation: tracking progress towards the Global Goal on Adaptation through satellite-derived indicators” published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science on 11 November 2025.
