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Shelf Sea Modelling Research Group

Welcome to the Shelf Sea Modelling Research Group

photo of Bardsey taken from the Prince Madog

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The shelf sea modelling research group in the School of Ocean Sciences investigate a range of physical processes at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. A lot of our focus is on sediment dynamics and morphodynamics, and we simulate how our shelf seas have evolved over the recent geological past, how intraseasonal and interannual variability affects the dispersal of marine organisms, and how our shelf seas might vary in the future as a result of sea-level rise and the exploitation of the marine renewable energy resource. To address these issues, we make use of a wide range of modelling techniques, mostly run on high performance computers. We use both the 3D ROMS model and the spectral wave model SWAN extensively. We also use other tidal models such as POLCOMS, TELEMAC and ADCIRC, and, more recently, models with dynamically adaptive meshes such as the Gerris flow solver, and meshless techniques such as Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). Central to our modelling work is model coupling, and most of our simulations are either driven by the outputs of climate models, or involve dynamical coupling between oceanographic models, such as wave-current interactions.