Keynote Presentations from the AVEC International Summer School, Peyresq, 14-27 September 2003

Speaker: Richard Nicholls
r.nicholls<at>mdx.ac.uk
Middlesex University, Enfield, London, EN3 4SF, UK

Title of the talk: Climate change and economic development on Europe’s coast (pdf: 3,7MB)

Biosketch

I started my university career as a geologist at the University of Southampton where I obtained a 2.1. During this degree, I recognised that I was interested in coastal processes and coastal systems. Fortunately, I was able to take up a studentship in applied coastal geomorphology also at Southampton. This concerned coastal erosion in Christchurch Bay, and most particularly the rapid retreat of Hurst Castle Spit. The research was wide-ranging and included historical analysis, beach profiling, sediment sampling and work with artificial (aluminium) tracers that could be tracked with a metal detector. My work concluded that the problem was more localised than generally recognised, and the supply of new sediment to the spit had been removed by protection of the town of Milford-on-Sea. I also considered sustainable solutions to preserve Hurst Castle Spit using sediment cycling. This is exactly the type of solution eventually implemented in the mid 1990s by New Forest District Council.

Subsequently, I joined (the then) Plymouth Polytechnic in 1987 as a Research Fellow on the North Sea Project. My detailed work concerned flow and sediment transport over the sand wave field that occupies most of the southern North Sea. I went on three oceanographic cruises in the North Sea of up to 14 days duration. We deployed a range of instruments to measure flow and sediment processes. These deployments were difficult and only two main datasets were successfully generated:

A one-month time series of pressure difference across the sand waves;
A one-month time series of ripple migration and flow conditions.

This hard-won data lead to several important papers including in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

While the work in the North Sea was interesting and broadening, I recognised that I wished to return to coastal studies. In 1990, I took the opportunity to join the Laboratory for Coastal Research, Department of Geography, University of Maryland, USA as a faculty research scholar. This was a defining moment in my career as I immediately took the leadership of a large research project funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency on the potential impacts of sea-level rise on 13 developing countries. I worked on this for four years leading to editing an influential special issue of the Journal of Coastal Research. Consequently, I became involved in a number of related studies including studies of the Asian Development Bank in 8 countries, as well as synthesising the results for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), culminating in lead authorship of the coastal chapter in the IPCC Second Assessment Report (in 1996 after I had joined Middlesex). I also met Edmund Penning-Rowsell (in 1992) who visited me a College Park during a US trip to discuss my work on sea-level rise. This influenced my decision to join Middlesex subsequently.

At Maryland, I also engaged in other US-based studies of coastal change from a range of perspectives, particularly long-term change (coastal morphodynamics). In 1994, I was appointed as a lecturer to the (then) School of Geography and Environmental Management.

At Middlesex, I have continued to develop the work I was undertaking at the University of Maryland with great success. Some of the highlights of this are as follows:

Lead authorship of chapters in three more IPCC reports
- Regional Assessment (1998);
- Special Report on Technology Transfer (2000);
- Third Assessment Report (2001).
Participation in the IPCC Technical Group on Climate Impact Assessment in Barbados in December 2001.
Participation in three European projects as follows:
- PACE (Predicting Aggregated-scale Coastal Evolution) – 1996 to 1999;
- ACACIA (An Assessment of Climate Impacts on the European Union) – 1997 to 2000;
- DINAS-COAST (Dynamic and Interactive Assessment of National, Regional and Global Vulnerability of Coastal Zones to Climate Change and Sea-Level Rise) – 2001 to 2004;
Leadership of the EU-funded SURVAS (Synthesis and Upscaling of Sea-Level Rise Vulnerability Studies) Project from 1999 to 2001, including organising workshops in London (twice), Hamburg, Cairo and Kobe.
Participation in the DEFRA-funded Fast Track Programme from 1996 to present via which I developed global models of impacts of sea-level rise.
A Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2000/01, which allowed me to visit Columbia University for three months and initiate a range of new research contacts.
A visiting fellowship at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research which is allowing me to develop existing research on regional assessment of climate change, with East Anglia as a prototype case study.

Links with colleagues in Flood Hazard Research Centre and in other institutions have allowed me to develop my technical skills in a socially-meaningful context. Despite the substantial progress over the last decade, this remains a ripe area for further research.

On a personal level I am married to Lynda (since 1994) -- bringing back a little piece of America with me to Middlesex. We have wonderful twin daughters (Tegan and Jamie) aged 2.5 years, which have been life transforming for both of us. Life is now pretty full, but unpredictable from day-to-day but we seem to have adjusted well.

My hobbies include cricket (as a spectator), gardening, walking and cycling and transport, but right now my daughters dominate my life outside work.

AVEC is a EU FP5 Concerted Action No. EVK2-2001-00074

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