Anthony Wise

My PhD research investigates the coupling of the open ocean and sea shelf to understand the impact of open ocean sea level changes on the coastal environment. The PhD is a NERC funded DTP project based in the University of Liverpool and the National Oceanographic Centre. 

The project is motivated by the vulnerability of growing coastal mega-cities to flooding due to a predicted global mean sea level rise of 56-200 cm by 2100 and a global population expansion to 9 billion by 2050. Fundamental questions remain to be answered concerning what determines coastal sea level and it has only recently become possible to run ocean basin scale numerical models with fine enough grids to resolve the slope region and the dynamics that occur there. This project will use a range of ocean models, from simplified theoretical studies to state of the art simulations (using NEMO 1/12 degree, with free surface and hybrid z-sigma levels), of the northern North Atlantic. In doing so the project will investigate whether open ocean sea level changes influence coastal sea level and the role of the continental slope. It will also investigate whether the smoothing effect of the slope is determined by the speed of wave propagation and friction, and whether similar trapping limits how shallow water processes influence deep water sea level.  

The project draws together two pillars of excellence from the National Oceanography Centre emerging from a long history of world-class sea level and shelf sea science at Liverpool. Prior to this project I obtained an MSc in Applied Mathematics funded by an RAEng award and a BSc in Computer Science.