Abstract Sea level is rising and increasing the risk of flood, erosion and salt intrusion along the coastlines of the world. We describe the latest sea‐level projections designed to help the Netherlands adapt to climate change. To improve on previous projections, we develop here a framework that allows a better connection between observed sea‐level changes and projections. First, a sea‐level budget provides an attribution of observed sea level to its contributors. This budget is applied to the same region as the projections. Second, the projections start in 1995 allowing a long overlapping period with observations, which allows an evaluation of the projections for total sea level and for each individual contributor. The framework helps identify issues in a former version of process‐based sea‐level projections and guides decision making to avoid them in this and future updates. In particular, we decide to select plausible climate models for ocean dynamic sea‐level change. The resulting sea‐level rise median and 5th to 95th percentile ranges in 2100 compared to 1995–2014 are 44 (26–73) cm, 59 (40–95) cm and 82 (59–124) cm for the SSP1‐2.5, SSP2‐4.5 an SSP5‐8.5 emissions scenarios respectively. The framework is extended with a new way to develop low‐likelihood high‐impact scenarios to explore the deeply uncertain future.
Bars et al. (Fri,) studied this question.