Focus of Session: Many open questions in characterizing the climate of the ocean, atmosphere, and land are further emphasized at their interface in coastal regions. Decadal projections of the coastal environment remain highly uncertain due to fine temporal and spatial scale interactions among the physical, biological and hydrological processes, calling for an interdisciplinary and mesoscale approach in observational and modeling studies. While observations provide insights in current and past trends and variability, regional modeling fills the gap between the future projections by the global climate models and the growing demand for adaptation and mitigation strategies at highly resolved scales. This session's focus is to assess the coastal manifestation in physical, biological and hydrological environments of the global climate variability and change. We encourage observational papers addressing the variability and trends in the coastal environments. Studies are welcome that focus on building and testing of the capacity for decadal hindcasts and projections in the coastal environment using regional scale to integrated Earth System models, including the efforts for coupling of atmospheric, oceanic, hydrologic and ecological models. We also emphasize the development of tools for assessing uncertainty estimates of the predictions at coastal scales and the provision of physical and ecological decision assistance, tools and applications. Partnering Conferences: 11th Symposium on the Coastal Environment (CE) and the Conference on Climate Variability and Change (CVC) Lead Conference: 11th Symposium on the Coastal Environment Format of session: Invited papers __X__ Submitted papers __X__ Panel discussion ___ Contacts: 11th Symposium on the Coastal Environment: Hyodae Seo, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, hseo@whoi.edu and Darko Koracin, Desert Research Institute, Darko.Koracin@dri.edu CVC: Aiguo Dai, National Center for Atmospheric Research, adai@ucar.edu