Cambridge Coastal Research Unit (CCRU)News
# Environment Agency research overview
12th June, 2020
The Environment Agency (EA) and DEFRA fund and deliver applied flood and coastal erosion risk management research for all risk management authorities in England and Wales. They also work directly with Universities to provide end-user input to their research projects.
Over recent years the EA have had input to a number of Cambridge Coastal Research Unit (CCRU) projects (CBESS, FAST, RISC-KIT), recognising that fundamental research into coastal disaster risk reduction from natural coastal protection is of vital importance.
This latest EA/DEFRA research overview, records the continuation of this collaboration, highlighting the BLUEcoast (item 13.) and CoastWEB (17.) projects, where CCRU is a partner, and particularly RESIST (18.), where CCRU provides project leadership.
# Is sea level rise accelerating and what are the implications for coastal flooding?
8th November, 2018
Dr Ivan Haigh, Associated Professor in Ocean and Earth Science at the prestigious National Oceanography Centre, Southampton is at the Coastal Research Unit to present his latest work on sea-level rise and its impacts. He describes a novel approach developed to project sea-level rise out to 2300 to accurately assess our 'commitment to sea-level rise' and how sea level rise will impact coastal flooding around the UK.
Rising sea level is one of the most certain and costliest impacts of climate change. The Paris Agreement committed signatories to 'Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change'. However, while reducing human emissions of greenhouse gases will stabilise temperature and other climate factors, sea-level rise will continue for many centuries. This is due to the long timescale of cryospheric adjustment to elevated air temperatures (especially the large ice sheets), and the long timescale of the deep ocean temperature warming to surface warming.