CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS ON WEATHER-RELATED HAZARDS
Start date: 01/01/2016
End date: 31/10/2019
Participants: University of Auckland, University of Waikato, NIWA
Funded by: Natural Hazards Research Platform
Summary of the research
Coastal erosion in Aotearoa-NZ has become a land-use planning and political issue that is hotly contested by affected communities, with a strong demand for a much more robust evidence base for both present and future changes predicted from a warming climate. Coastal erosion and coastal inundation are generated by a combination of (i) extreme weather related events (storms), (ii) interannual and decadal variations in climate and (iii) systematic increases in sea level, waves and storm surge from climate change.
This project will generate a much finer scale (<10 km resolution) set of projections of nearshore wave and surge conditions spanning the next 100 years using state-of-the-art modelling approaches (compared with NIWA’s 2012 projections at 50 km scales using earlier IPCC models). The most recent IPCC emission scenarios and associated climate properties, the main drivers of weather-related coastal hazards drive these predictions of future wave and surge processes. Projections of wave climate and storm surge will use a recently developed multi-model based on a statistical downscaling approach, incorporating weather-type classification and clustering techniques. Each weather type is linked to sea wave conditions from a wave hindcast. This relationship is used to project future changes in regional wave conditions from atmospheric pressure projections. Ultimately, the projection will be calculated at a scale of 10 km for the whole New Zealand coastline. Projections will be made publicly available through a free-access web-based platform. Wave and surge projections will be applied to concurrently-developed realistic, reliable, and robust hazard prediction models for coastal erosion and coastal inundation hazards in New Zealand
LONG-TERM ESTUARINE EVOLUTION
Start date: 01/06/2018
End date: 31/12/2020
Participants: Andrew Swales and Iain McDonald
Funded by: NIWA
Summary of the research
The project is part of a larger NIWA programme on “fine sediments” involving field observations and numerical modelling. The contribution of this component is to understand and predict estuarine morphodynamic changes in the presence of mangrove vegetation at the decadal scale and beyond. The project will involve a detailed case study for which measurements are available and new measurements will be collected.
BLUECOAST
Participants: UK researchers and institutions
Funded by: NERC-funded
Summary of the research
We are happy to be partners (thanks to Laurent Amoudry and Alex Sousa for asking to participate) and contribute to this project for which you can find further information in the following website: http://projects.noc.ac.uk/bluecoast
NEPTUNE
Start date: 01/01/2019
End date: 31/12/2020
Funded by: University of Cagliari (Italy)
Summary of the research
Neptune is a research project that aims to better understand the morphodynamics of sandy beaches in Sardinia where the presence of vegetation at the shoreline significantly affects nearshore hydrodynamics and specifically wave runup.
The collaboration with Sandro de Muro and Angelo Ibba (who also provided the picture on the side) started a few years back and will hopefully continue for many years in the future.
If you ever get the chance, go to Sardinia
