Coastal hazards, such as erosion and flooding, pose significant threats to many coastal areas, and in extreme cases, have led to the decimation of some coastal communities. Historically, management has mostly focused on the use of grey infrastructure such as seawalls and groynes. However, these interventions are costly and can cause unintended consequences, promoting a shift toward Nature-based Solutions (NbS), such as the use...

The Coastal Ocean Environment Summer School In Nigeria and Ghana (COESSING; https://coessing.org) has been run for one week every year since 2015. The school, an endorsed project of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030), has provided a platform for approximately 1,000 scientists from Africa, the United States, and Europe to exchange scientific knowledge, to network, to learn, and to...

Collaborative research is a powerful way to build capacity across various domains, from academia to industry (Gamo et al., 2010). At its core, collaborative research is characterized by shared objectives, mutual trust, and collective problem-solving (Lang et al., 2012; Moeenian et al., 2022). Here, we describe the project entitled SARgassum risk across the Atlantic: building capacity for Transformational Adaptation in the Cari...

The West African coastal population and ecosystems are increasingly exposed to a multitude of hazards. These are likely to be exacerbated by global climate change and direct impacts from local human activities. Our ability to understand coastal changes has been limited by an incomplete understanding of the processes and the difficulty of obtaining detailed data. Recent advances in satellite techniques have made it possible to...

Since 2011, unprecedented pelagic sargassum seaweed blooms have occurred across the tropical North Atlantic, with severe socioeconomic impacts for coastal populations. To investigate the role of physical drivers in post-2010 sargassum blooms in the Central West Atlantic (CWA), conditions are examined across the wider tropical North Atlantic, using ocean and atmospheric re-analyses and satellite-derived datasets. Of particular...

The holopelagic macroalgae sargassum has proliferated across the tropical Atlantic since 2011, of consequence for coastal populations from West Africa to the Caribbean with limited early warning of major beaching events. As part of an interdisciplinary project, ‘Teleconnected SARgassum risks across the Atlantic: building capacity for TRansformational Adaptation in the Caribbean and West Africa’ (SARTRAC), an ensemble forecast...