Dr Anne Pardaens

Areas of Expertise

• Sea level rise

• Regional variations in sea level rise

• Ocean freshwater budget and salinity 

Publications by Anne

Current Activities

Anne's work aims to reduce uncertainty in future sea level rise. She works as part of a team with people who focus on different aspects of this uncertainty in projections of future sea level rise.

In addition to projecting global mean sea level rise for the 21st century, climate model simulations suggest that present-day spatial variations in sea level will also change under global warming. Different models, however, show  limited agreement in their patterns of projected sea level rise.

A key focus of Anne's work is developing approaches to reduce uncertainty in projected spatial variations of sea level rise. Approaches include analysis of factors involved in the differing regional projections given by current climate models. She also plans to investigate the possibility of using observational constraints on model sea level projections.

Aggressive mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions would reduce the magnitude of future sea level rise relative to "business-as-usual" future scenarios. Anne is involved in analysing climate model projections to assess the amount of sea level rise that may be avoided with such mitigation policies.

Career Background

Anne joined the Met Office Hadley Centre in 1996. She has worked on  development of a number of coupled atmosphere-ocean climate models and of an ocean model forced at the surface by observation-derived fluxes. She has contributed to the evaluation against observations of the climate simulated by these models. A key focus of Anne's work was analysing and evaluating the sources of fresh water which affect large-scale ocean salinity and its variability.

Before joining the Met Office, Anne worked in the Meteorology Department of the University of Edinburgh. She obtained a PhD in space plasma physics from the University of Sheffield.