River-Coastal Science and Engineering Postdoc and researcher Dr. Qiang Sun recently received the Associate Dean’s Research Award at the Tulane Research, Innovation and Creativity Summit for his poster on “Contributions of sea-level components to High Tide Flooding along the continental U.S. coastlines”. The work has been undertaken as part of a project within the NASA Sea Level Change Team (https://sealevel.nasa.gov/science-team/projects/project-5), which aims to better understand the sources of High-Tide Flooding along the U.S. coastlines. High-Tide Flooding refers to coastal flood events that are usually not fatal but disrupt people’s daily lives by blocking roads, forcing businesses to close or damaging property. The number of High-Tide Flooding events have exponentially increased over the past decades particularly along the U.S. east but also the Gulf coast due to rising mean sea levels. In their study Dr. Sun and colleagues systematically assess the different physical processes that contributed to the increases. The results provide a better mechanistic understanding of the phenomenon and lay the foundation for improved predictions into the future.
