The world's coastal zones experience climate change in several ways. The most obvious impact on the coastal zone of the current global warming is sea-level rise. Global mean sea level has increased at an average rate of 1-2 mm during the past century (IPCC TAR 2001), but the manifestation of this global change is variable in Europe, being enhanced or attenuated by isostatic processes of the Earth’s crust following the last glaciation. Nevertheless, increasing vulnerability of ecosystems and human systems in the coastal zone is expected.

Changes in oceanic circulation patterns on multiple scales are evident. Best known controllers of global climate are the El Niño Southern Oscillation, and the North Atlantic Oscillation that plays a major role in Europe's climate. These are projected to display altered frequency and intensity in future.

Meteorological patterns will change as a result of shifts in the global heat balance. For the coastal zone, this (together with the changes in the behaviour of the oceans) is likely to mean more storminess, with greater storm surges and a modified wave climate regime.

These changes will drive transformations in the processes of sediment transport and deposition that are so important in the coastal zone, and also provoke changes in its ecosystems, including the human systems. ELOISE projects address the present situation in the coastal zone, providing the most robust multidisciplinary baseline to date, but several projects focusing on understanding and modelling processes also permit the assessment of projections into the future of impacts arising from many forcing factors, including climate change. The following section provides a categorisation of ELOISE projects according to their significance in contributing to the understanding of climate change and the potential for their use in adapting to or mitigating climate change. The appendix to this document lists a collation of the existing peer-reviewed ELOISE publications that are relevant to climate change, using this categorisation.

ECOFLAT 's study of carbon and nutrient cycling processes within tidal flat ecosystems potentially contributes baseline knowledge for climate science (e.g., van de Koppel et al., 2001). However, its predictive mathematical models of the key processes, mechanistically related to the main forcing factors in tidal flat systems, have been developed with the aim of addressing the scale mismatch between local-scale processes and their estuary- or regional-scale consequences. As such, these model outputs can be used to detect and explore the implications of global change. Similarly, EUROSAM linked a range of ecological process models with hydrodynamic models to make a predictive tool that addresses the likely responses of various saltmarsh ecosystems to environmental changes (e.g., sea level rise, increased pressure from human activities). To date, however, the project outputs have been focused more on valuation of the studied saltmarsh ecosystems than on any critical appraisal of their vulnerability and the scope for adaptation to environmental change.

ISLED's focus was on defining and describing the responses (both physical and biological) to sea-level rise in saltmarsh ecosystems. Losses of these ecosystems have been very severe in past decades (Dijkema, 1984), as a result of many human-induced pressures, and these losses are now being addressed in part. However, fundamental knowledge about saltmarsh accretion and erosion processes has been lacking, as has information on the characteristics and diversity of the ecosystem itself, and the main aim of this project was to consolidate that knowledge. This project has recognised that by the time accelerated sea-level rise has had its effects on vulnerable coastal ecosystems, it may be too late to respond. Thus a valuable aspect of this project was its exploration of other human-induced coastal changes as an experimental analogue of climate change (e.g., Hazelden and Boorman, 2001). This means that accelerated sea-level rise as a result of global warming will now be easier to assess, and its impacts on important ecosystems may more effectively be pre-empted.

Looking in detail at a single climate-sensitive ecosystem gives the greater baseline knowledge that is necessary for understanding climate change and its impacts. The goal of the M&MS project is to define the habitat requirements of seagrasses in the European coasts, the present threats to the sustainability of the ecosystem they form, and their resilience to disturbance (Duarte, 2002). By exploring the extent to which the isotopic composition of carbon, nitrogen and sulphur in seagrasses reflects the degree of human disturbance, this project also potentially provides a means of detecting climate change impacts.

The DUNES project compiled an effective database of the present state of selected European dune systems, and simplified their multiple processes and features into a workable integrated 'checklist' system combined with novel remote-sensing image processing. The main aim was to appraise the direct effects of human activity on dune vegetation and stability. However, its attention to the effects of intermittent processes, rather than assuming steady, linear change in these systems, is an important advance from the perspective of climate change knowledge, given that projections are for greater variability in storm and surge conditions. A further strength of the project is that its methodology allows for intra- and extra-regional comparisons of dune systems, potentially facilitating the knowledge transfer and ‘learning-by-analogy’ that are fundamental to adaptive social behaviour, rather than mere reactivity to climate change.

The possible impact of climate change on the distribution and population dynamics of cod and eelpout has been addressed by CLICOFI. From its outset, considerations of climate change science informed the project (e.g., Blust et al., 1993; and Schellnhuber and Sterr, 1993). Like most ELOISE projects, it was deeply multi-disciplinary, drawing together long-term retrospective climate data, time-series of fish population dynamics, and information about physiological processes and genetics. This approach means that the manifestation of climate change can be explored through the improved understanding and modelling of the temperature-sensitive responses of the studied species from molecular right through to population level.

BASIS explicitly aims to provide an integrated case-study of the likely magnitude of global changes on regional to sub-regional scales. Knowledge of the likely consequences of global changes for terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems in the Barents region is extended to an assessment of the impacts on human systems dependent on them, with the aim of determining the necessary conditions for the region's sustainable development. Climate change is an explicit element of the change addressed, albeit not the sole change, but the cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary approach of this study means that the outputs of this study are potentially highly valuable in exploring the manifestations of climate change. Like CLICOFI, it explores the implications of climate change on fisheries; it also defines how global change can be detected in major terrestrial natural resources. Such regional-level deeply integrated studies will be useful in future if they can specify the extent to which human and natural systems can adapt to changes. In particular, given that very pronounced impacts of global warming are occurring in the high latitude regions, and many of these impacts relate to coasts and coastal management, the contribution of BASIS is important.