I am an Associate Professor in Coastal Oceanography within the School of Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton, based at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton.
I am passionate about all things relating to sea level. My team and I investigate variations in sea level from time-scales of seconds (waves), to days (tides and storm surges), through to long-term century scale rises in mean sea level, and its impact on the coast.
Career history
In the last 12 years Ivan has worked on a wide range of projects in both industry and academia covering many different aspects of coastal oceanography, with a particular focus on sea-level rise and coastal flooding. After graduating from the University of Southampton in 2001, having studied oceanography and maths, he worked for 5 years as a numerical modelling consultant at ABP Marine Environmental Research. During this time he led several projects for the Environment Agency, looking at coastal flood risk along the UK south coast. He then undertook a PhD at the University of Southampton examining sea-level rise and extreme events around the UK. He then was a research assistant professor at the Oceans Institute at the University of Western Australia, primarily assessing past and potential future changes in sea level and variability around Australia and worldwide. In April 2012 he joined the National Oceanography Centre Southampton as a lecturer in Coastal Oceanography with the University of Southampton. Ivan is also an Adjunct research fellow at the UWA Oceans Institute, University of Western Australia.
Research
Responsibilities
Publications
Teaching
Contact
I have four main areas of research, as follows:
Mean Sea level: my research assesses local, regional and global trends in mean sea level, and in particular determines the best methods to detect accelerations in the rate of rise and understand inter-annual variability;
Extreme sea levels and coastal flooding: I investigate changes in storm surges and extreme sea levels and how this changes the frequency of coastal flooding and I apply extreme value analysis techniques. I am particularly interested in compound events, i.e. flooding arising from multiple sources;
Astronomical tides: I analyse inter-annual changes in tides (4.4 and 18.6-year tidal cycles) and variations arising from non-astronomical factors;
Coastal impacts: a key element of my research is translating the magnitude of the projected changes in mean and extreme sea level into impacts and what this means for coastal populations. In particular I consider adaptation responses in coastal cities, on deltas and in small islands.
Active Research Projects
CHANCE: Understanding compound flooding in the past, present and future for North Atlantic coastlines
In CHANCE we will deliver a new integrated approach, incorporating all the spatial and temporal dependencies between the four main source drivers of flooding in coastal regions.
CompFlood: Compound Flooding in Coastal Viet Nam
This project brings together UK and Vietnamese expertise 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 in Vietnam.
CoastRes: Coastal resilience in the face of sea-level rise: making the most of natural systems
CoastalRes aims to develop and demonstrate prototype methods to assess realistic pathways for strategic coastal erosion and flood resilience in the light of climate change, including sea-level rise.
Coastal change in Dorset
RISeR: Rates of Interglacial Sea-level Change, and Response
RISeR will use provide high-end projections of sea-level rise beyond 2100 for northwest Europe, based upon the reconstructed magnitudes and rates of regional Last Interglacial sea-level change.
ACROSS: Australasian Colonization Research: Origins of Seafaring to Sahul
The ACROSS project takes a multidisciplinary approach that embraces marine geoarchaeology, oceanography, and archaeogenetics, to examine the When, Where, Who and How of the earliest ocean crossings in world history.
Completed Research Projects
E-Rise
This project explored the feasibility of combining in situ and satellite-based data with statistical models to develop a toolbox which will help identify timings (with uncertainties) of sea-level rise rates and, accordingly, to estimate lead times for the UK.
Ivan conducting field work on our research vessel Bill Conway
SUCCESS synthesised a number of “black swan” storm surges for the UK – events that have not been observed but that are physically plausible.
Adjust 1.5
This project defined and evaluated Adjustable emission Pathways to 1.5°C, in which the emissions pathway was not fixed at the outset, but instead responds to our evolving knowledge of the warming response to emission to deliver a warming target of 1.5°C over the 21st century and beyond.
Research Impact
My innovative research has led to considerable impact, in the UK and internationally, as recognized by my receipt in 2019 of the Vice Chancellor Award for Research Impact. Since 2019, I have been co-authoring the coastal risk chapter in the upcoming 3rd Climate Change Risk Assessment Report, for the UK Government; which sets out the risks and opportunities facing the UK from climate change. In 2019, I was one of four people invited to the House of Commons to answer questions from MPs on coastal flooding and erosion for a new Government review. Since 2019, I have been leading a study for the Environment Agency assessing changes in sea level in the Thames Estuary to help inform the Thames Estuary 2100 Plan – 2020 review, which provides strategic direction for protecting the 1.3 million people and £275B of infrastructure currently at risk of flooding in London. In 2019/20, and also previously in 2016/17, I led the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) report on coastal flooding; the aim of which is to provide a co-ordinating framework for the UK to transfer high quality evidence on marine climate change impacts, and guidance on adaptation, to policy advisors and decision-makers. In 2017, I helped update the coastal flooding scenarios for the Cabinet Office’s 2017 National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies. In 2015 I established and continue to lead and develop the UK’s Coastal Flooding database (surgewatch website); the most detailed database on coastal flooding anywhere in the world. Since its launch in May 2015, the website has been viewed >100,000 times and datasets have been downloaded by numerous organisations.
International Leadership
I helped to establish and now lead the biennial Extreme Value Analysis and Application to Natural Hazard (EVAN) international conference series. The overall aim of this conference series is to bring together and promote interchange between a diverse community of research scientists, students, practitioners and stakeholders concerned with this complex and inter-disciplinary topic. To date we have held four highly successful conferences in Germany (2013), Spain (2015), UK (2017, which I organised and chaired) and Paris (2019). The 5th conference will take place in Florida, USA in 2021, and we plan to hold the 6th conference in Venice, Italy in 2023.
Test closure of the Thames Barrier, which protects London from Flood
I have acted as the main figurehead for several key international activities. I currently lead the development of the Global Extreme Sea Level Analysis database (GESLA website), which forms the basis for virtual all global extreme sea level assessments and has been used in the two most recent IPCC assessments. In late 2019, as a result of my work with the Environment Agency (see below), the University of Southampton has been formally invited to be part of the I-Storm network, and I am currently acting in this capacity to help storm surge barriers around the world plan and prepare for sea-level rise. In 2017, I worked with the World Bank to provide a coastal flood risk assessment for Fiji. In 2016, I co-authored a chapter on sea level in the North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment.
Since 2017 I have been an editor for Nature’s Scientific Data journal and Frontiers in Marine Science. In the last three years I have guest edited special issues in Natural Hazards, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering and Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.
My Research Group
Seb Pitman measuring rip currents at Perranporth, Cornwall for PhD
Past group members include: Clementine Chirol, Hagen Radtke, Sebastian Pitman, Christos Mitsis, Fiona Hibbert, Matthew Wadey, Abd Amirudin and Robert Mawdsley.
Brown, S., Nicholls, R. J., Hanson, S., Brundrit, G., Dearing, J. A., Dickson, M. E., Gallop, S. L., Gao, S., Haigh, I. D., Hinkel, J., Jiménez, J. A., Klein, R. J. T., Kron, W., Lázár, A. N., Neves, C. F., Newton, A., Pattiaratachi, C., Payo, A., Pye, K., ... Woodroffe, C. D. (2014). Shifting perspectives on coastal impacts and adaptation. Nature Climate Change, 4(9), 752-755. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2344
Haigh, I. D., & Nicholls, R. J. (2017). Coastal flooding. In M. Frost, J. Baxter, P. Buckley, S. Dye, & B. Stoker (Eds.), Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership: MCCIP Science Review 2017 (pp. 108-114). MCCIP Secretariat. https://doi.org/10.14465/2017.arc10.009-cof
Huthnance, J., Weisse, R., Wahl, T., Thomas, H., Pietrzak, J., Souza, A. J., van Heteren, S., Schmelzer, N., van Beusekom, J., Colijn, F., Haigh, I., Hjollo, S., Holfort, J., Kent, E. C., Kuhn, W., Loewe, P., Lorkowski, I., Mork, K. A., Patsch, J., ... Woodworth, P. (2016). Recent change - North Sea. In M. Quante, & F. Colijn (Eds.), North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment (pp. 85-136). (Regional Climate Studies). Springer International.
Nicholls, R. J., Reeder, T., Brown, S., & Haigh, I. D. (2015). The risks of sea-level rise for coastal cities. In D. King, D. Schrag, Z. Dadi, Q. Ye, & A. Ghosh (Eds.), Climate change: a risk assessment (pp. 94-98). Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Karunarathna, H., Brown, J. M., Briganti, R., Pockrajac, D., Haigh, I., Beck, C., Dissanayake, P., Pedrozo-Acuna, D., Sparrow, K., & Wadey, M. (2014). Modelling memory of coastal flood systems. In Proceedings of 34th Conference on Coastal Engineering, Seoul, Korea, 2014 (pp. Paper-management.19). (Coastal Engineering Proceedings; No. 34). Coastal Engineering Research Council.
Bosserelle, C., Haigh, I. D., Pattiaratchi, C., & Gallop, S. L. (2011). Simulation of perched beach accretion using smoothed particle hydrodynamics. In Coasts and Ports 2011 : Diverse and Developing: Proceedings of the 20th Australasian Coastal and Ocean Engineering Conference and the 13th Australasian Port and Harbour Conference (pp. 79-83). Engineers Australia.
SOES6011: Applied Sediment Dynamics, Course co-ordinator CENV6143 Research Project: Engineering in the Coastal Environment, Course co-ordinator with Robert Nicholls SOES6014: Introduction to Physical Oceanography, Lecturer SOES6058: Introduction to Physical Oceanography for Ship Science, Lecturer SOES6060: MSc Key Skills and Applied Coastal Oceanography, Lecturer FEEG6012: MSc Research Project: Engineering in the Coastal Environment, Lecturer
Dr Ivan D Haigh Ocean and Earth Science National Oceanography Centre Southampton University of Southampton Waterfront Campus European Way Southampton SO14 3ZH UK