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Contact details

Position: 
Emeritus NOC Fellow
Group: 
Marine Systems Modelling
Site: 
Liverpool
Email: 
jaw at noc.ac.uk
Telephone: 
+44 (0)151 795 4849

Profile

Biography

Research interests

My research interests are in the physical oceanography of coastal and shelf seas, including tides, surges and waves in coastal sea areas, and atmosphere-ocean-wave-seabed-coastal interaction processes, focusing mainly on the NW European continental shelf. Some of the topics I have investigated include tide-surge interaction, 3D current structure in shallow seas, finite difference modelling, wave-tide-surge interactions and the imaging of surface waves by microwave radar. I have been involved in developing and validating coupled hydrodynamic-wave models and the application of numerical models to coastal impacts of climate change, and tidal energy. Most recently, I also have research projects in the South China Sea and the Caribbean, exploring natural coastal defences and the impacts of climate change for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Qualifications

In 1975 I took a double first at Bangor University in Mathematics and Physical Oceanography.
In 1984 I was awarded a PhD from Liverpool University, with a thesis entitled ‘The Variability of Currents in Shallow Seas’.

Employment

I have worked for the Natural Environment Research Council since 1976, originally at the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences (Bidston), latterly known as the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, which became part of the National Oceanography Centre in 2010. I have been a member of the Numerical Modelling Group during that time (now part of the Marine Systems Modelling Group), but also have been interested in the acquisition of data for model validation. I took a career break from 1991–1994 , during which time I worked for the UK Commonwealth Secretariat as a Consultant Physical Oceanographer in Trinidad and Tobago, in the West Indies, training counterpart staff, running fieldwork and building a model of the Gulf of Paria.