Associate Professor Thomas Wahl has received the 2018 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award from the European Geosciences Union. Wahl has been selected for his fundamental contributions to the research on assessment of coastal-flood risk.
A release from the EGU cites Wahl as “a highly productive, well-cited and active member of the EGU early career scientist community.” The release also notes that, “despite being at an early stage in his career, his influence on coastal risk assessment over the years has been both consistent and striking.”
During his doctoral work, he developed a new database of high-quality tide gauge records and innovative statistical models to assess sea level changes and storm surge risks in the German Bight. This work has triggered an ongoing revision of coastal design standards along the German North Sea coast.
Among others, he was the first to discover significant changes in the seasonal sea-level cycle in the Gulf of Mexico, which also modulate hurricane storm surge risk.
His work on compound flooding from storm surges and precipitation along the U.S. coast, summarized in a seminal paper published with Nature Climate Change helped shaping a new and active research field.
He is an author of interdisciplinary publications in top professional journals, including two in Nature Communications and one in Nature Climate Change, spanning the areas of oceanography, hydrology, statistical modelling and coastal engineering.
Wahl joined UCF in 2017 and previously served as a Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellow of the European Union at the University of Southampton. Wahl obtained a diploma in 2007 and his doctoral degree in civil engineering in 2012 at the University of Siegen, Germany. Afterward, he became a postdoctoral scholar at the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida.
- Published by the European Geosciences Union
- April 27, 2018