Challenger Society Ocean Modelling SIG Meeting

Noam Vogt-Vincent

University of Oxford

Caption: An excessively hot and sunny day at NOCS!

The Ocean Modelling SIG holds its meeting every September, for ocean modellers (particularly early career scientists) across the UK. Ocean Modelling was actually the first scientific meeting I ever attended (back in 2018, presenting some undergraduate summer project work) and it has always been a great forum to learn about the status of ocean modelling research in the UK, so I wanted to make sure I was able to attend before leaving the UK later this year.


Caption: Finishing touches on my presentation on the train down from London

Ocean Modelling was hosted at NOC Southampton this year and, as always, a broad range of exciting research was presented (from the seasonality of Southern Ocean ventilation, to the practicality of ocean alkalinity enhancement by spreading olivine on beaches). One of my favourite talks this year was Julia Rulent’s assessment of pollutant dispersal from a major shipwreck off the coast of Sri Lanka, finding that the environmental impacts of this marine disaster could have been significantly worse if the accident took place during a different monsoon phase (as well as the challenges of investigating an incident under active litigation!).

I presented recent findings from my PhD research, on the connectivity of coral reefs in the southwest Indian Ocean, and how this may influence the evolutionary adaptation of corals to warming over the coming centuries. This research is very much on the biological-end of what is presented at Ocean Modelling, but I got plenty of interesting questions, and enjoyed follow-on discussions with others working on marine dispersal.


Caption: Presenting my PhD research at the Ocean Modelling SIG Meeting (image credit: Helen Johnson)

In summary, this year’s Ocean Modelling was an enjoyable and productive meeting (as always!) and I am very grateful to the Challenger Society for enabling me to attend and present my PhD work.

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Noam Vogt-Vincent
I just completed my DPhil (PhD) in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford, principally supervised by Professor Helen Johnson. My DPhil thesis was titled Marine dispersal in the western Indian Ocean (focusing on the dispersal of marine plastic pollution around remote islands, and the connectivity of coral reefs) and my main research interest is the interaction between coral reef systems and the physical marine environment (past, present, and future). Later this year, I will be taking up a NOAA Climate & Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology, where I intend to continue my research into the response of our tropical coral reefs to future climate change.