About the project
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) plays a critical role in decadal climate variability with impacts on sea level, regional weather patterns, and thus flooding, which poses a significant hazard to coastal infrastructure, including the UK’s Nuclear Power Plants. The overall goal of this project is to address fundamental questions about the causes and consequences of flooding around the UK’s coastlines over the next 100 years.
To protect key sectors, coastal defenses need to be built to withstand an extreme water event with just a 10-4 annual occurrence probability. With evidence for past major instabilities and recent modelling efforts indicating potential dramatic changes, understanding the, insofar overlooked, connection between the deep AMOC and flooding is increasingly important.
The overall goal of this project is to address fundamental questions about the causes and consequences of flooding around the UK’s coastlines over the next 100 years. You will use observations and model output to examine the rate of cold-water formation in the North Atlantic, its downstream impacts on the deep portion of the AMOC, and the link with surface variability related to flooding.
Specifically, you will link deep ocean changes to:
- sea level
- regional weather patterns
- coastal flooding risk.
Four key questions include:
- To what extent is the deep portion of the AMOC attributable to sea level variability around the UK and therefore coastal flood risks?
- How do shifts in the deep AMOCs properties and/or strength impact regional weather patterns and the above processes?
- How might longer-term decadal changes impact the UK’s capability to protect coastal areas, including Nuclear Power Plants, from flooding?
- Can we predict downstream changes around the UK from upstream observations of the deep ocean?
These impacts will be considered alongside key sector needs of the UK’s Nuclear Power Plants, using the Sizewell site as a case study. The conclusions of your work will underpin our knowledge of deep ocean drivers of flooding. In this way, your work will improve capability for future flood risk management, address key sector needs, and improve policy decisions.
Please contact the lead supervisor if you require further information about the project.
Potential supervisors
Lead supervisor
Dr Kathryn Gunn PhD
Lecturer in Climate Sciences
Research interests
- Southern Ocean Circulation (where and how much water flows)
- Temperature and Salinity Changes (to what extent does ocean structure vary and why)
- Seismic Oceanography (developing an innovative, high-resolution technique for ocean mapping)
Supervisors
IH
Professor Ivan Haigh
Professor
Research interests
- I currently have 8 active research grants (4 as principle investigator (PI)) worth £4.8M.
- I am the PI on two international grants that started in 2019, both looking at compound flooding. Compound flooding (when the combination, or successive occurrence of, two or more hazard events leads to an extreme impact e.g., coastal and fluvial flooding), can greatly exacerbate the adverse consequences associated with flooding in coastal regions and yet it remains under-appreciated and poorly understood. In the £788k NERC- and NSF- (US National Science Foundation) funded CHANCE project, I am leading a team (working alongside researchers from the University of Central Florida), to deliver a new integrated approach to make a step-change in our understanding, and prediction of, the source mechanisms driving compound flood events in coastal areas around the North Atlantic basin. In the £575k NERC- and NAFOSTED- (Vietnam’s National Foundation for Science and Technology Development) funded project, I am leading a team that is working with colleagues in Vietnam to map and characterise present, and predict future, flood risk from coastal, fluvial, and surface sources and, uniquely, to assess the risk of compound flooding across the Mekong delta; one of the three most vulnerable deltas in the world. I am also the PI on a grant, which started in 2021. In this 41k project, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat), we are assessing past and future closures of the six storm surge barriers in the Netherlands.
- In 2021, I was awarded a 3-year (50% of my time) prestigious Knowledge Exchange Fellowship funded by NERC (UK’s Natural Environmental Research Council) and worth £154k. This fellowship builds strongly on my prior research and the overall goal is to provide guidance and tools that will help storm surge barrier operators better prepare for the impacts of climate change across every area of their operation now and into the future. Within the fellowship I am working primary with the UK Environment Agency (EA) and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat). However, to ensure the work undertaken can benefit all the existing (and planned) surge barriers around the world, I am also working closely with I-STORM. I-STORM is an international knowledge sharing network for professionals relating to the management, operation and maintenance of storm surge barriers, and has representation from all the surge barriers worldwide.
Entry requirements
You must have a UK 2:1 honours degree or higher in a relevant subject.
You can also have its international equivalent.
International applications
If English is not your first language, you will need an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) overall score of 6.5, with a minimum of 6.0 in all components.
Visit our English language proficiency pages to find out about other qualifications we accept.
Fees and funding
For UK students, tuition fees and a stipend of £15,285 tax-free per annum for up to 3.5 years.
How to apply
You need to:
- choose programme type (Research), 2025/26, Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences
- choose PhD in Ocean and Earth Science FLOOD CDT (full time)
- add the project title under ‘Topic or field of research proposed’
- add your supervisor in section 2
Applications should include:
- a 1 page statement of your research interests in flooding and FLOOD-CDT and your rationale for your choice of project
- a CV (resumé) giving details of your academic record and stating your research interests
- name two current academic referees together with institutional email addresses (on submission of your online application your referees will be automatically emailed requesting they send a reference to us directly by email)
- academic transcripts and degree certificates (translated if not in English) – if you have completed both a BSc and an MSc, we require both
- an IELTS/TOEFL certificate, if applicable.
Contact us
Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences
If you have a general question, email our doctoral college: fels-pgr-apply@soton.ac.uk.
Project leader
For project specific queries, email the lead supervisor Kathryn Gunn: K.Gunn@soton.ac.uk.
