Modelling the future of coastal soft cliffs underchanging climate

Applications are invited for a PhD studentship within the NERC-ENVISIONDoctoralTrainingPartnership with a project entitled: "Modelling the future of coastal soft cliffs under changing climate". Coastal soft cliffs are extremely important components of coastal environments worldwide. Their retreat is a global problem that threatens coastal communities.

Climate change affects soft cliffsretreat; however,research is needed to understand and quantify this effect.

To do so, we also must understand and model physical thedrivers offailure of soft cliffs.This PhD project will develop numerical methods to describe the future behaviour of soft cliffs and analysetwo case studies representative of cliff/beach systems worldwide: the Happisburgh (U.K.) and Montauk Point, Long Island(USA) coasts.

The project will start by analysing existing data, integrated with new field work,to clarify and model the physical processes driving cliff failure that are still poorly understood. Thereafter, the focus will be on devising an innovative technique to model the long-term behaviour of these systems.

Finally, the effect of climate change on cliff retreat in the two casestudieswill be modelled, under high-end emission scenarios of the IPCC.