Simon Engelhart
@sealevelchange.bsky.social
Department of Geography, Durham University. Interested in sea-level and climate change across all spatial/temporal scales and geologic records of past subduction zone earthquakes and extreme events https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/simon-e-engelhart
Our warmest congratulations to all our graduating students today in the class of 2026. We wanted to acknowledge all your hard work over the past three years, to celebrate your wonderful achievements and to wish you all the very best in your future endeavours! 👩🎓👨🎓🎉🍾🙌
New paper out in Phil Trans R Soc A. We asked a simple question: are the IPCC’s lowest sea-level rise scenarios actually achievable? Short answer: probably not. 🧵 royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/article...
The achievability of low-emission IPCC sea-level rise scenarios
Abstract. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report (2021) provides a range of projections on greenhouse gas emissions and global war
royalsocietypublishing.org
Our colleague Gavin Bridge is quoted a number of times in this piece just published in The Independent about extracting oil and gas from the North Sea: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...
Why drilling in the North Sea won’t bring down UK energy prices
Trump, Farage, the Tories and the right-wing press are all calling for it, but here's why experts say extracting oil and gas from the North Sea can't bring down UK energy prices
independent.co.uk
Durham Geography has reached its highest-ever position in the QS World University Rankings 2026—rising to 6th globally (from 11th in 2025). Thank you to our staff, students, alumni, and partners worldwide who have helped make this possible.
Our new paper in QSR led by @seftongeo.bsky.social, presents new relative sea level records from the Federated States of Micronesia. Utilising subsiding islands and spatio-temporal modelling lets us derive information from important new locations in the Pacific: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Mangrove sediments reveal drivers of Late Holocene sea-level change in the equatorial Pacific Ocean
Proxy relative sea level (RSL) reconstructions offer context for historical observations and future projections. Unlike many sites in the equatorial P…
sciencedirect.com
Looking for postdoc positions in the UK studying weather extremes? Two jobs with deadline 4th Jan: Historical windstorms, working with two insurance companies: jobs.reading.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai... Storylines of extreme events, as part of a European collaboration: jobs.reading.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...
Research Scientist in Historical Windstorms:Whiteknights Reading UK
Full time, fixed term contract (up to 36 months)
jobs.reading.ac.uk
22-month postdoctoral position in the Durham Geography department working on Alaska paleogeodesy as part of NERC/NSF funded grant. More details here, application deadline is January 8th: durham.taleo.net/careersectio...
22-month postdoctoral position in the Durham Geography department working on Alaska paleogeodesy as part of NERC/NSF funded grant. More details here, application deadline is January 8th: durham.taleo.net/careersectio...
Job opportunity - Postdoctoral Research Associate working alongside @sealevelchange.bsky.social - Job Description - Postdoctoral Research Associate in Physical Geography (25001689) closing date 11:59pm 8th January 2025
Our colleague Chris Stokes is currently at COP30 sharing some of the science around ice sheets and sea level rise, including a recent paper from earlier this year: www.nature.com/articles/s43... Here he is with an update and a few words on what he's been up to....
A great few days of outreach activity at the Celebrate Science event at Locomotion in Shildon, County Durham. Pictured here are Lauren Pretorius and @sealevelchange.bsky.social who kindly staffed our augmented reality sand box.
Congratulations to Olivia Griffin Roach who has been announced as the joint winner of the 2025 Social & Cultural Geography Research Group dissertation prize for her project 'Beyond the Bump: Understanding How Women Experience and Navigate Pregnancy & Early Motherhood in the Financial Service Sector'
The Geographical Magazine of the RGS-IBG has just published a supplement on choosing University Geography courses. Two of the five 'case study' students are from Durham - Mia Yearwood and Cameron Powell. They provide some valuable insights on what its like to study on our BA and BSc programmes.
We are delighted to announce the 2025 History and Philosophy of Geography undergraduate dissertation prize winner: Henry Blake, @geogdurham.bsky.social, for his dissertation Foreclosed Futures: Hope, Precarity, and Ambivalence in Contemporary Cornwall. Read it here: tinyurl.com/4jjc4dp6 #geosky
News & Events – History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG)
historyphilosophyofgeographyrg.co.uk
A preprint describing our concerns with Voortman and De Vos posted here:
Faulty science and faulty statistics can't stop sea level acceleration: An expression of concern regarding Voortman, H. G., & De Vos, R. (2025). A Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes. Journa...
Voortman & de Vos (2025) attempt to test for acceleration in relative sea-level (RSL) records from 243 tide gauges. They claim to have identified statistically significant acceleration in only 12 of t...
essopenarchive.org
Bob Kopp@bobkopp.net · 11mo agoUpdate on this thread: Thanks to the feedback on this thread, I realized the methodological problems with the Voortman and De Vos (2025) paper (which the New York Post heralded as "Rising-sea hysteria debunked") went deeper than I originally realized, and clearly necessitate retraction. 1/
So I & 14 colleagues (incl. @richardtol.bsky.social @vsrikrish.bsky.social @goneri76.bsky.social) wrote an expression of concern, laying out the problems with the paper and calling for its retraction. We first provide scientific context, and the paper's failure to engage with related studies. 2/
![We are writing to raise serious concerns regarding Voortman, H. G., & De Vos, R. (2025). A Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering.
Voortman & de Vos (2025) attempt to test for acceleration in relative sea-level (RSL) records from 243 tide gauges. They claim to have identified statistically significant acceleration in only 12 of the 243 gauges and conclude that “This pattern is inconsistent with sea level acceleration driven by global phenomena.”
This result, which stands in contrast both to other studies conducting similar tide-gauge analyses (e.g., Wang et al., 2021, 2025) and the broader body of knowledge regarding global-mean sea level change and its drivers (e.g., Fox-Kemper et al., 2021), demands scrutiny. Yet the reviewers failed to recognise the context of this manuscript and the breadth of the existing literature, resulting in at best a superficial review. Upon close examination, we believe the paper contains fatal methodological flaws that compromise the validity of its conclusions and merit retraction.
Scientific Context
Comparison to other studies of RSL acceleration at tide-gauges and IPCC projections: The conclusions of this study are dramatically different from those of Wang et al. (2021, 2025). Wang et al. (2025) concluded significant acceleration was present at 68% of tide gauges, while this paper identifies it at only 4%. It is surprising that the reviewers did not insist that the authors provide a discussion to explain how they came to such different results, rather than ignoring the substance of Wang et al. (2021) and the existence of Wang et al. (2025). (We describe some likely statistical reasons below.)
Notably, the authors state that “a comparison [of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections] to locally observed sea level appears to date to have been undertaken on a very limited scale”, and have made similar claims to the media, even though they cite without](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lwszjazwq3nliquvxg6l332b/bafkreicw4k6yw7btj7xppvnolexzhr6fxwkxmm5fminzxeufp3dlcsf5d4)
![The authors also engage minimally with research on the global-mean sea level budget since 1900 (c.f. Fox-Kemper et al., 2021), providing a brief dismissal of one paper: “The current state of affairs is best illustrated by the paper by Frederikse et al. [(2020)] that claims to have “closed the sea level budget”. Unfortunately, a detailed inspection revealed a number of weaknesses and even errors in Frederikse’s work.” This statement is backed only by a reference to the first author’s own work (Voortman, 2023), which does not substantively engage with Frederikse et al. (2020). Regarding Frederikse et al. (2020), Voortman (2023) simply writes about his feelings: “Albeit Frederikse’s paper is an impressive scientific achievement, I feel that this conclusion is too rash. Estimating that the number of unknowns in this problem is larger than the number of equations available, I tentatively suggest that the reconstruction by Frederikse et al. is one of many plausible reconstructions that close the sea level budget.” No more “detailed inspection” of Frederikse et al. (2020) is provided in this paper or the cited source.
The authors also highlight Munk (2002)’s enigma, which was an apparent inconsistency between estimates of 20th century global-mean sea-level rise compared with constraints on changes in Earth rotation and the sea level budget, but miss subsequent work resolving it. This inconsistency was subsequently resolved by newer estimates of 20th century global-mean sea level rise, improved modeling of glacial isostatic adjustment and its effect on Earth rotation, and improved interpretation of the constraints on Earth rotation from eclipse records (e.g., Dangendorf et al., 2017; Frederikse et al., 2020; Hay et al., 2015, 2016; Mitrovica et al., 2015).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lwszjazwq3nliquvxg6l332b/bafkreicufs4iuxycg2i5wji5pj7c5mx2t4ik2d7446nst3grf25omydviq)
I had an engagement with blogger, failed California gubernatorial candidate, and self-identified reporter Michael Shellenberger this past week, which started out being about this new paper being heralded by climate skeptics as disproving global sea-level acceleration. (LONG 🧵)
The UK just had its warmest spring on record. It was also the sunniest on record. And the driest in more than 50 years. "A sign of our changing climate", says @metoffice.bsky.social www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/new...
Double record breaker: Spring 2025 is warmest and sunniest on UK record
Spring 2025 has broken historical climate records, marking an unprecedented season of warmth and sunshine across the UK, according to provisional Met Office statistics.
metoffice.gov.uk
Durham Geography @geogdurham.bsky.social is looking to appoint an Associate Professor in the field of Heritage Landscapes and/or Social Justice and Wellbeing in heritage. Happy to answer questions. Please share widely #geography #heritage #universityjobs www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNH544/a...
Associate Professor (Research & Education) at Durham University
Apply for the Associate Professor (Research & Education) role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.
jobs.ac.uk
Is it hot right now in the UK? New interactive website allowing anyone to explore live temperatures hour-by-hour across the UK, and whether they are cool, warm or hot relative to normal. istheukhotrightnow.com Built by @roostweather.bsky.social.
Chris's work has also featured in The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Sea level rise will cause ‘catastrophic inland migration’, scientists warn
Rising oceans will force millions away from coasts even if global temperature rise remains below 1.5C, analysis finds
theguardian.com
Geography at Durham@geogdurham.bsky.social · last yr.Lots of coverage of our colleague Professor Chris Stokes's research on polar ice sheets and sea level rise, here is a piece in the BBC: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
There’s so much happening right now, I thought I’d put together a running thread on the dismantling of #climate and research and knowledge infrastructure in the United States 🧵
USGS research has uncovered a 700-year sequence of major earthquakes in the eastern Aleutian Islands through tsunami evidence and modeling. This work enhances our understanding of seismic hazards in the region. 🌋⚒️🧪 #Seismology #TsunamiResearch #AleutianIslands #EarthquakePreparedness
A 700-year rupture sequence of great eastern Aleutian earthquakes from tsunami evidence and modeling
New research from the USGS, University of Hawaiʻi, and the University of California, Santa Cruz provides fresh insights into a prehistoric sequence of earthquakes in the Aleutian Islands. Researchers ...
usgs.gov
Our Cascadia earthquake-driven subsidence and sea-level rise paper is featured in a PNAS "In This Issue" highlight. doi.org/10.1073/iti1.... There's a pug and cat on the cover of the issue so that's also cool 😺 And check out the paper here! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
In This Issue | PNAS
In This Issue
doi.org
🚨New Study Alert!🚨 Our new PNAS study shows how earthquake-driven land subsidence + rising seas = major flood hazards along the Cascadia subduction zone. 🌊🌎 @cascadiaeqs.bsky.social (1/🧵) www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
3-year postdoc here in Geography at Durham working on sand extraction with Dr. Laura Schoenberger: durham.taleo.net/careersectio...
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Physical Geography
Click the link provided to see the complete job description.
durham.taleo.net
March 27, 1964 - a M9.2 subduction #earthquake struck southern #Alaska. Shaking was felt across much of #BritishColumbia and Yukon and the resulting #tsunami caused damage in some coastal BC communities. More (USGS): earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/... Video: youtube.com/watch?v=L6TB... ⚒️🧪🌊
Our colleague Jonathan Darling gave evidence at the Home Affairs Committee on how the current model of asylum accommodation is failing, offering poor value for money to the taxpayer, inadequate shelter to those in need, and a lack of considered and sustained engagement with communities.
Congratulations to our recent graduate George Buckland whose dissertation was awarded first place by the Urban Geography Research Group. George's dissertation was entitled 'The gaybourhood never sleeps: Mapping the intergenerational (re)configurations of queer urban space (Manchester’s Gay Village).
Are you a PhD or Masters student in Paleoclimate looking to learn and network with your community? Excited to announce that applications to USSP 2025 are now open until 6th March. 🦖⚛️🪨🌊🔬🧑🏽💻 Please share! 🤩
Urbino Summer School in Paleoclimatology
Visit the post for more.
urbinossp.wordpress.com