Coastal ocean processes mediate the exchange of momentum, buoyancy, and tracers between the land–sea interface and the open ocean. Processes including wind-driven upwelling and downwelling, boundary current interactions, shelf–slope exchanges, coastal current instabilities, tides and internal waves, river plumes, and boundary layer dynamics occur over a wide spectrum of scales where variable bathymetry and coastline properties can have a critical impact. This session invites contributions that advance process-based understanding of coastal dynamics as well as their effects on sediment transport, biogeochemical cycling and coupled atmosphere-ice-ocean processes. We encourage physical, biogeochemical oceanographic and interdisciplinary studies that leverage novel observational approaches, advances in numerical modeling as well as analytical contributions that provide insight into the governing dynamics throughout worldwide coastal oceans and shelf seas.