A TEAM of Southampton experts is to study the threat to the UK posed by potentially-devastating tsunamis.
Scientists and engineers from the University of Southampton are involved in the project led by the city-based National Oceanography Centre to assess how a massive underwater landslide could impact the country.
The four-year, £2.3m study, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), will look at the possible effects on society and infrastructure of a huge natural disaster over the next 100 to 200 years, as well as examining whether sea defences could cope or need to be improved, by researching landslips below the Arctic Ocean.
It is hoped the information will enable experts to determine whether climate change at the globe’s most northernmost ocean will lead to increased risk of tsunamis.
Project leader, Dr Peter Talling of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton said: “We hope that the project will produce a step-change in scientific understanding about some of the most remarkable and largest natural events that occur on our planet.”
