Adapting to the Town-Scale Impacts of Climate Change in Connecticut

The geologic history, patterns of settlement, and the location of Connecticut on the northern section of the Atlantic coast of America causes the state to be exposed to a high coastal flooding risk. State leaders recognized the need for scientific advice that was actionable at the scale of towns and watersheds where planning decisions are made. To develop and disseminate this information, in 2014 they established the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation (CIRCA) as a collaboration between the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CTDEEP) and the University of Connecticut (UConn). The central charge was to coordinate the wide range of research expertise and infrastructure available in the faculty with the policy and regulatory experience of the CTDEEP staff to provide new options and guidance to state and local government. Initial projects have focused on the impacts of sea level rise. CIRCA was charged with reviewing the NOAA (Tech. Rep. OAR CPO-1) sea level projections and local observations to develop recommendations that could be incorporated in state guidelines for coastal management. Though existing regulations had required consideration of climate change, feed-back from town leadership to CTDEEP staff suggested that the wide range of future projections in the NOAA report made the selection of a planning threshold difficult. We the report the development and implementation of localized projection for planning. In partnership with federal (NOAA and HUD) and additional State agencies (CT Dept. of Housing and Dept. of Transportation), and using a combination of data and models, CIRCA has also developed localized information on wave statistics and the impact of sea level rise on coastal flooding statistics. CIRCA also coordinated a review of technical and regulator challenges to the deployment of living shoreline approaches for erosion protection in Connecticut. These activities share the approach of aligning federal resources and academic and state agency expertise to address local problems through the coordination by an interdisciplinary institute and we provide examples of successes achieved using the approach.