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Project title

Cullen Scholarship: Recovering legacy tidal records to elucidate trends in sea level rise in Ireland

Primary Funding Agency

Marine Institute

Co-Funding Organisation(s)

n/a

Lead Organisation

Maynooth University (MU)

Lead Applicant

n/a

Project Abstract

Knowledge of sea level variations is key to understanding coastal vulnerability and risks. Fundamental to understanding these quantities is the availability of appropriate sea level data. In Ireland, digitized long records (>40 years) are rare and are geographically exclusively northeast of a line connecting Dublin to Malin Head. Data archaeology can fill gaps where undigitized records exist. Sea level data archaeology has, in general, focused on digitization of numerical records. Numerical records are often at reduced temporal resolution, as monthly averages or high/low water levels. Digitisation of marigrams opens the potential to unlock high frequency records but the techniques of digitizing these records are in flux. Marigrams do exist in paper form for Cork, in the south of Ireland, and Galway, in the west of Ireland. We identify the digitization of the Cork and Galway records as the key activity to address this call. Their digitization will create two long (>40 years), high frequency (hourly or more frequent) tidal records south west of the Dublin-Malin line. These records will be analysed for tidal constituents, non-tidal residual statistics, and mean sea level. This information will be critical for understanding mean sea level throughout Ireland, and coastal vulnerability specifically in the Cork and Galway regions.

Grant Approved

�110,000

Research Hub

Climate research

Research Theme

Being prepared for Ireland�s future climate.

Start Date

01/07/2022

Initial Projected Completion Date

30/06/2026