News archive

Deltares is working with the European Space Agency (ESA) and guest researchers from all over Europe (Spain, Portugal, Scotland, Germany and the Netherlands) to see whether satellites can track plastics in the ocean. By following plastics from space, we can watch a much larger area to investigate where the plastics come from and where they end up. That information can be used to devise specific measures and see whether they work. The satellites pass repeatedly over the same area and so they supply much more information. At present, that can't be done at this scale with other monitoring methods.

With sea level rise as a given for centuries to come, the potential impacts of future coastal flooding are a major source of concern for Europe. A new European research project on regional sea level rise trends and its coastal impacts, the Coastal Climate Core Service (CoCliCo) project, started this month. Deltares will play a major role in the design and operation of a webportal to collect and analyse information on sea level rise, coastal dynamics, flooding and socio-economic impacts of historic and future sea level trends.

High water in Limburg in the summer of 2021 had more impact than river floods in 1993 and 1995. The intense rainfall and high water of July 2021 in the Netherlands and the neighbouring countries was an extreme and exceptional event with a major social impact in Limburg. On behalf of the Expertise Network on Flood Risk Management (ENW), a broad consortium of research institutions led by Delft University of Technology and Deltares has now completed an initial analysis of the available information on a range of subjects.

In the face of climate change and sea level rise a climate proof coast is an important asset. Natural sandy coasts like for instance in The Netherlands supply us with a natural sediment resource and sustainable response to sea level rise.

The news has been packed in recent months with severe climate and weather events—record-high temperatures from the U.S. and Canadian Pacific Northwest to Sicily, flooding in Northern Europe and the Eastern United States, wildfires from France to Siberia to Greece. Events that seemed rare just a few decades ago are now commonplace. Now a new study from Deltares, IHE Delft and the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory predicts that because of rising temperatures, extreme sea level events along coastlines the world over will become about 100 times more frequent by the end of the century in about half of the 7,283 locations studied.

With Germany, Belgium and Turkey still reeling from historic floods, a new report outlines how Nature-based Solutions can help reduce the impact of such disasters across Europe.

Today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first Working Group contribution of its 6th Assessment Report (AR6) on climate change. Working Group I focused on the current state of the climate, how human influence is changing it, and possible global pathways for the future. The report echoes the overwhelming scientific consensus that even the lowest emission scenario will expose communities across the globe to more extreme climatic events. Curious what the IPCC report means for water and subsurface? Read now the seven take-aways of the experts of Deltares?

As the impacts of climate change, sea level rise and natural hazards continue to escalate, so too will the demand for new knowledge and innovative and transformative adaptation strategies. A strategic partnership between the government of The Republic of the Marshall Islands and Deltares, signed yesterday, aims to develop and share knowledge required to tackle these current and future challenges and puts the country at the forefront in the battle against climate change.