Skip to content

Sea Level and Ocean Circulation

Changes in sea level cause coastal flooding, loss of wetlands, and erosion of sandy beaches. Changes in ocean currents affect hurricane activity, rainfall patterns, and temperatures on land. We address basic and applied questions about sea level and ocean circulation in a changing climate.

News

July
2026

Chris was named Director of the Francis E. Fowler IV Center for Ocean and Climate

June
2026

Chris was selected for a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award

June
2026

Chris attended the 2026 AGU Chapman Conference on Updating Usable Projections of Future Sea Level in Montreal, Canada

May
2026

Chris ran the first Summer School in Sea-Level Science in Woods Hole. The two-week event was sponsored by WHOI and NASA

April
2026

Chris traveled to Connecticut College to speak at the Lear-Conant Environmental Symposium on Sea Level Rise: Measurement, Understanding, Adaptation

March
2026

Chris gave a talk at the American Museum of Natural History's SciCafe series entitled "Is the Gulf Stream weakening? Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Wrong"

February
2026

Chris attended the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland

February
2026

Chris got tenure!

January
2026

Chris co-led the first meeting of an international team, supported by the International Space Science Institute in Bern, Switzerland, on the relationship between the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and coastal sea level

December
2025

Chris had a paper published in AGU Advances demonstrating that the rate of U.S. coastal sea-level rise doubled in the past century, which was reported on by The Washington Post and National Public Radio