Vidi grant for solving the regional sea level puzzle
Two NIOZ researchers have receive Vidi grants of 800,000 euros. The laureates are Dr Aimée Slangen, for solving the regional sea-level puzzle and Dr Rick Hennekam, for investigating tipping points in climate and ocean systems. These grants will enable them to develop an innovative line of research over the next five years and further expand their own research group.
Project DARSea: Solving the regional sea-level puzzle
Sea-level change is driven by a combination of different processes, each acting on their own temporal and spatial scales. It is a complex puzzle, which has not yet been solved on a regional scale. This Vidi project will combine observations and models of regional sea-level change with a new approach to find optimal regions which allow for the puzzle to be solved. The goal is to better understand the different causes of regional sea-level change in the 20th century, which leads to better future projections.
In this Vidi project, I will use improved observations and state-of-the-art models to reconstruct regional sea-level change for the 20th century. I will take a budget approach, in which I compare the sum of individual contributions to sea-level change with the total change. To maximise the chances of closure of the sea-level budget on the finest possible spatial scale, I will use machine learning techniques, which have been newly developed in my research group, to find regions with coherent sea-level variability.
The observational and simulated regional sea-level budgets will be used to answer the following three main research questions: (i) how well do models simulate observed regional sea-level change? (ii) can we close the 20th century regional sea-level budget? and (iii) which part of the regional observed changes can we attribute to human-made and natural drivers? The answers to these questions will help coastal societies to understand why the sea level has changed along their coast and which part is caused by man-made climate change. This knowledge will allow policymakers to make well-informed decisions on coastal protection against future sea-level rise.
In this Vidi project - called DARSea: Detection and Attribution of 20th century Regional Sea-level change - I will work with two PhD candidates and sea- level researchers from The Netherlands, Norway, Great-Britain and Germany.