Climate Change and Coasts
The coast is the dynamic interface between the land and the sea. Our work is looking at the potential impact of climate change projections across scales from county to city port and wetland.
Overview
Sea-level rise and storm surges represent challenges to man-made infrastructure ranging from power stations to sea defences and ports. Coastal management strategies encompass wetlands and deltas in addition to managed retreat and traditional defence approaches. Working across faculty boundaries, our work is focussed on:
- (i) understanding the mechanisms of coastal erosion and deposition across management scales, in terms of measurement, monitoring and modelling;
- (ii) the economic implications of climate change (sea-level rise, storm events, flooding) at the coast in terms of impacts, climate mitigation and adaptation, including the long term viability of ports, towns or regions;
- (iii) the relationship between governance, the bio-physical environment and social behaviour within coastal areas.
A major output of our work is the contribution to major governmental and international policy discussions, most notable the Stern Review and the IPCC reports. We work with major industrial players, such as HR Wallingford, ABPmer, Kenneth Pye Associates Ltd in addition to the UK Met Office, central government (e.g. DECC / DEFRA / DFID) and intergovernmental organisations (e.g., OECD).
Links to external websites
- iglass
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- Nature Climate Change: Future flood losses in major coastal cities
- Networks Comic ITRC
The University cannot accept responsibility for external websites.
Sea-level rise and storm surges represent challenges to man-made infrastructure ranging from power stations to sea defences and ports. Coastal management strategies encompass wetlands and deltas in addition to managed retreat and traditional defence approaches. Working across faculty boundaries, our work is focussed on:
- (i) understanding the mechanisms of coastal erosion and deposition across management scales, in terms of measurement, monitoring and modelling;
- (ii) the economic implications of climate change (sea-level rise, storm events, flooding) at the coast in terms of impacts, climate mitigation and adaptation, including the long term viability of ports, towns or regions;
- (iii) the relationship between governance, the bio-physical environment and social behaviour within coastal areas.
A major output of our work is the contribution to major governmental and international policy discussions, most notable the Stern Review and the IPCC reports. We work with major industrial players, such as HR Wallingford, ABPmer, Kenneth Pye Associates Ltd in addition to the UK Met Office, central government (e.g. DECC / DEFRA / DFID) and intergovernmental organisations (e.g., OECD).
Links to external websites
- iglass
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- Nature Climate Change: Future flood losses in major coastal cities
- Networks Comic ITRC
The University cannot accept responsibility for external websites.
Facilities
The National Oceanography Centre hosts a unique suite of flume facilities allowing investigations of the near-bed region of the boundary layer allowing measurements of flow, turbulence, bed stability and sediment transport processes. This includes a selection of annular, re-circulating and scour flumes designed for use in the laboratory as well as versions designed for on-ship and in situ deployments. We also host a fully equipped sediment analysis laboratory allowing full particle size analysis and examination of sediment fabric.
Various numerical modelling software (e.g. Danish Hydraulics Institute Mike21 suite of tools, Wave Watch III) is run on our High Performance Computing facilities, including our new fourth generation cluster, IRIDIS 4, which is the most powerful academic supercomputer in England and the second largest academic computational facility in the UK behind National Facility.