- Sea Level Change
- Regional Sea Level Variations
- Effects of Solid-Earth Deformation, Gravity Variations and Earth Rotation on Sea
- Oceans in the interiors of the moons of the giant planets (also at OCS - Texel)
Waarom kan de zeespiegel ook dalen wanneer ijskappen smelten?
Prof. Dr. Bert Vermeersen
‘Sea level research affects all of us’
Besides being a professor of planetary research at TU Delft, geophysicist Bert Vermeersen is head of the NIOZ Sea Level Center of Expertise. ‘The rise of the sea level is one of the hot potatoes in the current climate issue. However, the sea level is far more than just a water level. To start with, it is a relative number, because sea level is related to factors such as subsidence, rebound (rising ground level) and sediment transport. And not just people, but fauna and flora in coastal areas also immediately feel the sea level’s impact on the environment. These effects are also important research subject for our Sea Level Center.’
Scenarios for the Wadden Sea
‘One important initial outcome of our Center’s work was the sea-level scenarios that we compiled for the Wadden Sea on behalf of the Wadden Academy in close collaboration with Deltares and TNO. A relative sea-level change can differ per place and region for various reasons. Besides vertical ground movements and sediment transport, sea-level rise can also be influenced by sea currents, wind direction, differences in the heating up of the seawater and even changes in gravity if an enormous mass of water is moved. We have incorporated all these effects into a single integrated study with scenarios for the Wadden Sea in the coming decades.’
‘At present, the eastern Wadden area is still silting up. Will that change this century with the result that the area becomes more submerged? There are still many uncertainties, such as whether the ice in West Antarctica will start to melt faster, for example. In any case, the scenarios provide a guideline for what could happen in the 21st-century.’
Applied research
‘Unlike my research at TU Delft into the oceans on the icy moons that orbit Jupiter and Saturn, the research into sea levels is highly applied. We have seen that not only government ministries but also mayors of coastal municipalities were very happy with this independent and integrated research. They can use these scenarios to better support far-reaching interventions, such as dyke reinforcements and other coastal defence measures. In the future, we hope to further refine our research, for example by no longer working on a scale 100 by 100 km, but instead calculating scenarios with a far higher resolution at a scale of 10 by 10 km.’
The scenarios for the sea level of the Wadden Sea are described in the Netherlands Journal of Geosciences.
Read more +Research Interests
I have two main areas of interest at NIOZ: Sea level change & oceans inside icy moons.
Sea level change
Only recently it has been recognised that regional sea level change can deviate strongly from the global average. This recognition has important consequences for effects of sea level change at coastlines, ranging from coastal protection to biogeomorphological impacts and interactions. My main task at NIOZ is to establish a Center of Expertise on Sea Level Change in general and on these regional effects in particular, with special emphasis on Dutch coastal areas. This part of my research interests has close connections to my appointment in the Geoscience & Remote Sensing Department at the Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences of TU Delft.
Example of regional sea level change due to a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (after Bamber, Riva, Vermeersen & LeBroq, Science, 324, 901-903, 2009)
Oceans inside icy moons
Water oceans do not only occur on the Earth, but are also present in the interiors of some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Although not directly belonging to the science agenda of NIOZ, the study of these planetary water oceans underneath the surface ice has close resemblances with areas of expertise of NIOZ, ranging from physical oceanography to deep sea habitats and possibly life. This part of my research interests has close connections to my work at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering and to NWA Route 4 / Origins Center and is partly done at the OCS Department on Texel.
Education & Current Positions
- Full professor at TU Delft in 2014
- TU Delft Chair on PLanetary Exploration in 2014, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering and the Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences
- Senior scientist NIOZ
I studied astronomy at Utrecht University and did my PhD in geophysics at the same university. During my postdoc years in Italy (Bologna, Milan) and Germany (Stuttgart) I started to numerically model regional variations of sea level change due to postglacial rebound and other geophysical processes. These models were combined with earth-oriented space observations from gravity and altimetry satellites when I was appointed assistant professor at TU Delft in 1999 and associate professor in 2007. Around the time of the landing of the Huygens probe on Saturn moon Titan in 2005 I became interested in planetary exploration as well. This resulted in the establishment of the new TU Delft Chair on Planetary Exploration in 2014, of which I spend 0.7 fte at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering and 0.1 fte at the Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences. In the meantime, my expertise on sea level change led to the appointment as (then 0.3 fte, now 0.2 fte) Senior Scientist at NIOZ in 2011.
Linked news
NIOZ publications
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2021
Jiang, Y.; Wu, X.; van den Broeke, M.R.; Kuipers Munneke, P.; Simonsen, S.B.; van der Wal, W.; Vermeersen, B.L.A. (2021). Assessing global present‐day surface mass transport and glacial isostatic adjustment From inversion of geodetic observations. JGR: Solid Earth 126(5): e2020JB020713. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020jb020713Simon, K.M.; Riva, R.E.M.; Vermeersen, L.L.A (2021). Constraint of glacial isostatic adjustment in the North Sea with geological relative sea-level and GNSS vertical land motion data. Geophys. J. Int. 227(2): 1168-1180. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggab261
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2020
Hermans, T.H.J.; Tinker, J.; Palmer, M.D.; Katsman, C.A.; Vermeersen, B.L.A.; Slangen, A.B.A. (2020). Improving sea-level projections on the Northwestern European shelf using dynamical downscaling. Clim. Dyn. 54: 1987–2011. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-05104-5Rovira-Navarro, M.; Gerkema, T.; Maas, L.R.M.; van der Wal, W.; van Ostayen, R.; Vermeersen, B. (2020). Tides in subsurface oceans with meridional varying thickness. Icarus 343: 113711. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2020.113711Soderlund, K.M.; Kalousová, K.; Buffo, J.J.; Glein, C.R.; Goodman, J.C.; Mitri, G.; Patterson, G.W.; Postberg, F.; Rovira-Navarro, M.; Rückriemen, T.; Saur, J.; Schmidt, B.E.; Sotin, C.; Spohn, T.; Tobie, G.; Van Hoolst, T.; Vance, S.D.; Vermeersen, B. (2020). Ice-ocean exchange processes in the Jovian and Saturnian Satellites. Space Science Reviews 216(5): 80. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00706-6
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2019
Rovira-Navarro, M.; Rieutord, M.; Gerkema, T.; Maas, L.R.M.; van der Wal, W.; Vermeersen, B. (2019). Do tidally-generated inertial waves heat the subsurface oceans of Europa and Enceladus? Icarus 321: 126-140. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2018.11.010
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2018
Stocchi, P.; Vacchi, M.; Lorscheid, T; de Boer, B.; Simms, A.R.; van de Wal, R.S.W; Vermeersen, B.L.A.; Pappalardo, M.; Rovere, A. (2018). MIS 5e relative sea-level changes in the Mediterranean Sea: Contribution of isostatic disequilibrium. Quat. Sci. Rev. 185: 122-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.01.004Vermeersen, B.L.A.; Slangen, A.B.A.; Gerkema, T.; Baart, F.; Cohen, K.M.; Dangendorf, S.; Duran-Matute, M.; Frederikse, T.; Grinsted, A.; Hijma, M.P.; Jevrejeva, S.; Kiden, P.; Kleinherenbrink, M.; Meijles, E.W.; Palmer, M.D.; Rietbroek, R.; Riva, R.E.M.; Schulz, E.; Slobbe, D.C.; Simpson, M.J.R.; Sterlini, P.; Stocchi, P.; van de Wal, R.S.W.; Van der Wegen, M. (2018). Sea-level change in the Dutch Wadden Sea. Geol. Mijnb. 97(3): 79-127. https://doi.org/10.1017/njg.2018.7
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2016
Root, B.C.; Novák, P.; Dirkx, D.; Kaban, M.; van der Wal, W.; Vermeersen, L.L.A (2016). On a spectral method for forward gravity field modelling. J. Geodyn. 97: 22-30. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jog.2016.02.008Sabadini, R.; Vermeersen, B.; Cambiotti, G. (2016). Global Dynamics of the Earth: Applications of Viscoelastic Relaxation Theory to Solid-Earth and Planetary Geophysics. Springer: [s.l.]. ISBN 978-94-017-7552-6.
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2014
Slangen, A.B.A.; Carson, M.; Katsman, C.A.; van de Wal, R.S.W.; Köhl, A.; Vermeersen, L.L.A.; Stammer, D. (2014). Projecting twenty-first century regional sea-level changes. Clim. Change 124(1-2): 317-332. dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1080-9Slangen, A.B.A.; van de Wal, R.S.W.; Wada, Y.; Vermeersen, L.L.A. (2014). Comparing tide gauge observations to regional patterns of sea-level change (1961–2003). Earth System Dynamics 5: 243-255. hdl.handle.net/10.5194/esd-5-243-2014
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2013
Fuchs, M.J.; Bouman, J.; Broerse, T.; Visser, P.; Vermeersen, B. (2013). Observing coseismic gravity change from the Japan Tohoku-Oki 2011 earthquake with GOCE gravity gradiometry. J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth, 118(10): 1-10. dx.doi.org/10.1002/jgrb.50381Stocchi, P.; Escutia, C.; Houben, A.J.P.; Vermeersen, B.L.A.; Bijl, P.K.; Brinkhuis, H.; DeConto , R.M.; Galeotti, S.; Passchier, S.; Pollard, D.; IODP Expedition 318 Scientists; Houben, A.J.P. (2013). Relative sea-level rise around East Antarctica during Oligocene glaciation. Nature Geoscience 6(5): 380-384. dx.doi.org/10.1038/NGEO1783van der Wal, W.; Barnhoorn, A.; Stocchi, P.; Gradmann, S.; Wu, P.; Drury, M.; Vermeersen, B. (2013). Glacial isostatic adjustment model with composite 3-D Earth rheology for Fennoscandia. Geophys. J. Int. 194(1): 61-77. dx.doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggt099
Linked projects
