Policymakers, urban planners, and resource managers are needing to make decisions with new threats in mind: more extreme weather events, heat, and sea level rise. O’Donnell led the initiative to predict Connecticut’s future sea level rise and translate the data into models for community planning – no simple task, since sea level rise is impossible to predict with 100% certainty. [embedded content]His mathematical analysis found that Connecticut’s potential sea level rise by the year 2050 could vary enormously. Ultimately, O’Donnell advocated for towns to plan for a 20-inch sea level rise by 2050. “We’ve been measuring this stuff [ocean mixing and sea level rise] and figuring out analysis techniques for years,” he says.
