Ocean Dynamics Impacting Shelf Sea Level in Eastern Atlantic

Understanding the drivers of coastal sea level change, on a range of timescales, is vital for protecting coastal populations, ecosystems, infrastructure, and maritime industries. As ocean circulation patterns are impacted by the changing climate, an improved understanding of the impact of ocean circulation on the mean, variability, and extremes of coastal sea level becomes increasingly urgent. While tidal and wind-driven fluctuations in coastal sea level are relatively well-understood, far less is known about the impacts of large-scale, climate-related ocean circulation patterns. These drive fluctuations in coastal sea level around the UK and Ireland by dictating volume transport between the deep ocean and the NW European continental shelf.

ODISSEA will: (1) establish the causal links between deep-ocean circulation and shelf sea level changes on monthly to decadal time scales; (2) provide estimates of coastal sea level change for the western UK and Ireland over the next 30 years, with an improved understanding of where and why these changes will occur, and; (3) isolate the impact of observed and projected AMOC changes on regional sea level change, variability, and extremes.