Polar Explorer: Sea Level

Our ability to deal with climate impacts in coastal cities and bring change, hinges on our ability to effectively communicate impacts. Incorporating sea level rise and climate impacts into city planning and community action plans is too often done in response to a devastating impact rather than through preventative planning. In New York the impact came in the form of Hurricane Sandy. Prior to Sandy, NYC, NY State and regional scientists had prepared planning documents, reports and communications directed at public officials and decision makers, warning of potential impacts from a changing climate. Presentations and reports identified the most exposed locations and infrastructure, but disbelief and a false sense of time mired any meaningful change. Effective communication about climate and impacts is at the root of planning and resilience. To be meaningful it must come from a trusted messenger, use well vetted materials that address both larger climate processes and drivers and local impacts, be accessible to the non-science community, and incorporate multiple modes of communication. The Polar Explorer: Sea Level app is a tool that has been used to this end (http://www.polarexplorer.org). An interactive multi-layered communication tool, it uses vetted data structured through a series of commonly asked questions and displayed through visualizations. We have been partnering with New York State, local community groups, and state and educational organizations to reach a broad cross section of the public with information useful for planning. We have co-presented at conferences for local planning and advisory groups, and incorporated the use of the app into local planning charrettes and have found the visualizations, interactivity of the delivery and the layered scaffolding make the app a useful tool for planners and decision makers. The app includes the physical science drivers of climate change and the social science impacts, and a look at the past the present and future projections. For planners and coastal managers the section on "Who is Vulnerable?' highlighting areas most often impacted by weather and extreme events, provides data useful in planning for extreme events. Whatever the challenges changing climate brings, we must address the challenge of communicating in an interactive, visual and accessible way.

This article reports on the launch of Polar Explorer: Sea Level, a mobile application developed by researchers at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory to democratize access to climate data. Presented at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting, the app is designed to bridge the gap between complex scientific datasets and public understanding by transforming raw data into interactive, clickable map layers. Users can explore seven core topics, such as regional sea level trends and storm surge risks, through a combination of visual data, audio narratives, and text summaries. To further deepen engagement, the app includes "quests" that challenge users to solve specific climate-related problems. While currently exclusive to iOS platforms, the tool has been praised for its ability to frame real-time data from NOAA and NASA within compelling narratives, making it a potentially valuable resource for both general education and undergraduate instruction.