Thomas Lorscheid

The Workshop for ´Global and Regional Sea Level Variability and Change´ took place on the island of Mallorca from 10-12 June 2015. This workshop aimed to all research topics related to past, present or future sea level. More than 120 participants from all over the world met in Mallorca for presenting and discussing the state-of-the-art in sea level research. The venue for this conference was the ´Arxiduc Lluís Salvador Hall´ at the University of the Balearic Islands.

The workshop was divided into seven sessions. After presentations on ´Mean Sea Level Observations and Processes´ and a ´Special Session on Mediterranean Sea Level´ were held during the first day, the contributions to the ´Modelling Sea Level Change´ and ´Sea Level Extremes´ sessions were shown during the second day. On the last day sessions on ´Coastal Impacts of Sea Level Changes´, ´Vertical Land Movements´ and finally ´Paleo Sea Level´ completed the workshop. All of the seven sessions started with a general keynote talk of an invited researcher of the related field, followed by several “normal” talks. In the afternoon, after the oral presentations, there was also a poster session related to the topics of that day. This variety of topics brought together people, whose research usually is not linked directly, like meteorologists, earth modelers, geologist, environmental engineers and others. This led to some fruitful discussions, because not only the closed research community of one specific field looked on the research, but also people with another view or interest gave their input.

I got the possibility to show my recent work on the sea level highstands around Mallorca during the last interglacial as an oral presentation in the ´Paleo Sea Level´ session. I got a good feedback from some experienced researchers, who are also working in the Mediterranean and as one of the few presented works about the local sea level in Mallorca especially the local audience was very interested. Giving me the possibility to attend this meeting, I would like to thank the University of Bremen, the German Excellence Initiative and ZMT for the financial support.

For the improving the social aspects of the workshop, there was an icebreaker reception on the first evening in the Casal Solleric, one of the old Majorcan houses of Palma, which is now owned by the city council. At the second evening, a conference dinner took place in a typical Spanish restaurant. Both events represent the very social and open flair of this workshop. Finally, a nice location like Palma de Mallorca completed the very nice impressions of this workshop to me.