Fundamental to ECFAS’ commitment to capacity building for coastal flood awareness and resilience is training the next generation of end users, flood risk managers, and early-career researchers. The ECFAS Traineeship Programme is aimed at European and international post-graduate scientists, engineers and researchers, with the goal of providing professional working experience on modelling/algorithms development for coastal flood awareness systems.
ECFAS has allocated a total of three traineeships for young professionals, the second of which was awarded to Marine Le Gal (PhD). Marine is a postdoctoral fellow, with past experience in tsunami numerical modeling, currently working on the validation and calibration of flood models and the generation of the ECFAS flood catalogue.
From January to March 2022, Marine joined researchers from Mercator Ocean International (MOI), in a traineeship facilitated by Consorzio Futuro in Ricerca (CFR). The internship was designed to intercompare different ocean numerical simulations with a various ranges of complexity (2D-barotropic vs 3D-baroclinic ocean models, different levels of ocean-wave coupling, tide-surge interactions etc) with a focus on sea level at the coast, including extremes. Simulations to be analysed were provided by University of Cádiz (UCA) and MOI for the Iberia-Biscay-Ireland regional seas (in relation to the Copernicus Marine Service).
The overall objective was to identify optimal settings for coastal sea level modelling, including extremes, and to provide recommendations for future evolutions of the total water level forecasting systems. The traineeship contributed to ECFAS WP4, Task 4.4: Intercomparison of models, led by CFR and under the responsibility of UCA. Outcomes will contribute to ECFAS deliverable D4.2: Report on the intercomparison between CMEMS and ANYEU-SSL modelling systems (M18).
Through the traineeship, Marine gained experience in analysis of ocean models and insights on ocean modelling for coastal sea level changes. She also gained knowledge on the wave-ocean coupling effects on coastal sea level, as well as tide-surge interactions.
