Kieran Newman

I am a NERC DTP funded student based in the National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool, and the School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, supervised by Dr Paul Bell (NOC), Dr Jenny Brown (NOC) and Prof. Andy Plater (SoES).  Prior to this, I studied BSc Mathematics with Astronomy at the University of Leicester, and MSc Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics at the University of Leeds, where I focused in my final semester on modelling the transition of tides to bores in the Trent Estuary. My research is focused on combining high resolution coastal ocean and wave models with remote wave, current and bathymetric sensing using X-band radar. I will be focusing on the Dee Estuary, between the Wirral and North Wales, Sea Palling, on the coast of East Anglia, and potentially the Wyre coast at Rossall, on the Fylde north of Blackpool. 

X-band marine radar can be used in intertidal and subtidal areas to deduce bathymetry, by either looking at the waterline over a tidal cycle, or measuring the waves and using relations between wave height, velocity and period, and the depth of the water. However, both methods rely on accurate knowledge of tidal, current and surge influences on the water height. Previous studies have used fixed point tide gauges, however I will be aiming to use coastal ocean and wave models to deduce spatial variability in the surface height. This will hopefully improve the bathymetry derived from this method, which can then be fed back into the model to provide more accurate simulations, and so on. 

I am using the POLCOMS coastal ocean model, coupled to the wave model WAM, on the NOC HPC cluster Mobius, and have so far managed a full coupled model run for the High Resolution Coastal Shelf domain and Liverpool Bay areas, for periods of around a month where the meteorological and boundary forcing have already been provided. I will next be using the Atlantic Margin Model and a nested POLCOMS model to run the simulations for the Sea Palling and Rossall sites, and then looking at combining some of the information from the radar data.