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I am a Senior Scientist in the NOC’s Marine System Modelling Group. I am a physical oceanographer with a 15+ years expertise in marine numerical modelling (hydrodynamic, wave and Lagrangian models). My research studies how the ocean interacts with human activities. I use ocean computer simulations to predict how the ocean will change in the future decades under different “what-if” scenarios. This means for example investigating what is going to happen in the ocean if we install many offshore renewable energy devices (such as wind turbines and underwater tidal turbines). It means also studying the effects of climate change in coastal areas and understanding if natural habitats could help to protect our coastlines.
Read more about me in the NOC Scientist Spotlight.
PUBLICATIONS:
PRESS & MEDIA :
WATCH or LISTEN my Into the Blue Podcast about Ocean Power.
Read about my work on WIRED, TIME, NEW SCIENTIST, Express.co.uk, DISCOVER MAGAZINE and MONGABAY.
I am now working on two projects that both started in 2022.
One is the Physics-to-Ecosystem Level Assessment of Impacts of Offshore Windfarms (PELAgIO) project. The project will assess the impact of offshore wind farms on marine environments, marine wildlife, and wider ecosystem structures, using a combination of ocean models and observations.
We will collect measurements from close to wind farms, to understand changes in the cycling of nutrients, oxygen and phytoplankton that are the bases for the food chain that supports fish, seabirds and big marine mammals. These measurements are extremely important, because they will help us to build a better model representation of an offshore wind farm. We can use this increased understanding to then predict future physical and biological changes under different future scenarios of climate change and expansion of offshore wind farm. We will then link those changes with the effects they will have on marine populations at all levels of the food webs.
Another is the UK Coastal Hazards, Multi-hazard Controls on Flooding and Erosion (CHAMFER) project. I am building a new coastal ocean model for the UK coast, that should help to better represent how tides, storm surges, waves and rivers interact in the coastal areas. We will use it to run present and future climate simulations. This is extremely important to understand the response of coastal areas to extreme storms now and with future sea level rise, and what the possible coastal protection measures are. These measures include understanding the coastal protection benefits of natural habitats, known also as nature-based coastal defences.
I was the NOC PI of the CHASANS project (2020-2024), delivering larval connectivity models for guidance on decommissioning and derogation of artificial structures in the North Sea.
I was the PI of the Scottish Shelf Waters Reanalysis Service (2019-2020), which provided a high-resolution simulation of the Scottish Waters physical marine environment, delivered as a downstream service of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service.
In the ANCODE project (2018-2021), I studied how the world’s largest urban area (the Pearl River Delta) will respond to extreme storms and sea level rise and whether nature-based defences can be used as a coastal protection defence. Read more about it here.
My recent research focused also on the evaluation of potential impacts of very large tidal stream arrays and climate change, as part of the EcoWatt2050 project (2015-2017) and of the Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy Hub (2018–2021).
I was involved in the modelling of storm surges, waves, and tides in the context of climate change for the SUCCESS project (2017) and for the Commonwealth Marine Economies Programme.
In the past, I was involved in the development of forecasting systems for the management of oil pollution in the Mediterranean Sea in the PRIMI project (2007–2010) and as work package leader in the MEDESS4MS (2012-2015) and EMODNET MedSea (2014–2015) projects.