Research project

Using Interglacials To Assess Future Sea_level Scenarios

Project overview

Existing sea-level rise projections do not account for the longer-term changes in global land-based ice volume. Although this ice-sheet contribution to sea-level change develops over decades to centuries, its long-term impact is large and virtually irreversible. It therefore dominates the uncertainty in future sea-level projections.

The aims of this project were to:
Quantify sea-level variation during interglacial periods (warm periods in between global ice ages)
Quantify relationships between global ice volume and climatalogical control processes

Staff

Other researchers

Professor Ivan Haigh

Professor

Research interests

  • I currently have 8 active research grants (4 as principle investigator (PI)) worth £4.8M. 
  • I am the PI on two international grants that started in 2019, both looking at compound flooding. Compound flooding (when the combination, or successive occurrence of, two or more hazard events leads to an extreme impact e.g., coastal and fluvial flooding), can greatly exacerbate the adverse consequences associated with flooding in coastal regions and yet it remains under-appreciated and poorly understood. In the £788k NERC- and NSF- (US National Science Foundation) funded CHANCE project, I am leading a team (working alongside researchers from the University of Central Florida), to deliver a new integrated approach to make a step-change in our understanding, and prediction of, the source mechanisms driving compound flood events in coastal areas around the North Atlantic basin. In the £575k NERC- and NAFOSTED- (Vietnam’s National Foundation for Science and Technology Development) funded project, I am leading a team that is working with colleagues in Vietnam to map and characterise present, and predict future, flood risk from coastal, fluvial, and surface sources and, uniquely, to assess the risk of compound flooding across the Mekong delta; one of the three most vulnerable deltas in the world. I am also the PI on a grant, which started in 2021. In this 41k project, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat), we are assessing past and future closures of the six storm surge barriers in the Netherlands.
  • In 2021, I was awarded a 3-year (50% of my time) prestigious Knowledge Exchange Fellowship funded by NERC (UK’s Natural Environmental Research Council) and worth £154k. This fellowship builds strongly on my prior research and the overall goal is to provide guidance and tools that will help storm surge barrier operators better prepare for the impacts of climate change across every area of their operation now and into the future. Within the fellowship I am working primary with the UK Environment Agency (EA) and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat). However, to ensure the work undertaken can benefit all the existing (and planned) surge barriers around the world, I am also working closely with I-STORM. I-STORM is an international knowledge sharing network for professionals relating to the management, operation and maintenance of storm surge barriers, and has representation from all the surge barriers worldwide.
Connect with Ivan

Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Research outputs

Eelco J. Rohling, Fiona D. Hibbert, Felicity H. Williams, Katherine M. Grant, Gianluca Marino, Gavin L. Foster, Rick Hennekam, Gert J. De Lange, Andrew P. Roberts, Jimin Yu, Jody M. Webster & Yusuke Yokoyama, 2017, Quaternary Science Reviews, 176, 1-28
Type: article
Philip Goodwin, Ivan Haigh, Eelco Rohling & Aimee Slangen, 2017, Earth's Future, 5(2), 240-253
Type: article
Tal Ezer, Ivan D. Haigh & Phillip L. Woodworth, 2016, Journal of Coastal Research, 32(4), 744-755
Type: article