Shelf and Coastal Impacts
In the Shelf and Coastal Impacts subgroup we are concerned with how climate change and direct human drivers impact coastal and shelf seas, focusing on the physics and its impact on chemistry and ecosystems. We work primarily in the European and Arctic Seas, but have interests in shelf seas around the world and their role and importance on a global scale. We use model simulations and historical observations to look at four themes:
1. Developing future scenarios for shelf sea regions:
- The change and variability under recent conditions
- The change and variability under possible future climatic forcing
- The change and variability under possible future human forcing
- The design of model experiments and the process of downscaling from global to regional to local scales.
2. Exploring the full range of uncertainty in the simulations
- Using historical observations (in situ and satellites) in shelf seas for model validation, analysis and assimilation.
- Using multi-model and multi-forcing ensembles to explore uncertainty
3. Exploring the role of shelf seas at the ocean basin and global scale
- How deep-oceans and shelf seas couple together, looking at the exchange of heat, water, momentum, carbon and nutrients
- How fine scale shelf-sea processes upscale to the large scale
- Contrasting different shelf sea regions’ response around the globe.
4. Working to improve the representation of shelf seas in global scale models
- Assessing shelf processes in global NEMO
- Exploring how to parameterise shelf seas in coarse resolution global models.
The Shelf and Coastal Impacts sub-group currently has four members:
Jason Holt (subroup leader)
