Marie Curie Actions: Inspiring Researchers - Imdea

Seeing the futurethrough the oceanicpastA changing climate increases the likelihood of extreme weatherevents such as droughts and fl oods. No country will be immuneto the changes, but some will be more vulnerable than othersbecause of their geographical location. Those in coastal areaswill be particularly at risk as water levels rise.What we can expect, and when, are questions which are tooimportant to be left to guesswork. Scientists are taking a varietyof approaches to predicting what the future holds, and manyare looking to the past for clues.Missing pieces of the puzzleRecords of palaeofl oods (fl oods in the past) do not go backfar enough to be useful indicators – they only date back to the18th century. Beyond that, data are rare or too brief to give aclear picture of variations in natural fl ood occurrence that canbe linked to climate change.Dr Kim came to the problem with a background in geology.Originally from South Korea, she had already completed herundergraduate studies there at Chungnam National University.She then moved to Europe to undertake MSc and PhD degreesat Bremen University in Germany.Continuing her tour of Europe, a Marie Curie Fellowshiptook her from the Centre de Formation et de Recherche surl’Environnement Marin in France, where she was working asan invited researcher, to the Royal Netherlands Institute of SeaResearch, which has one of the world’s leading research groupsin organic biogeochemistry. Her goal was to understand thefate of organic matter in coastal zones, as knowing this wouldhelp scientists to predict the results of future water levels oncoastal regions.Her strategy involved fi rst testing the applicability of a newlydeveloped index which could provide clues on past and futurefl oods. She also examined variations in marine organic matter.Sea ices in Kongsfjord during the Svalbard expedition in 2007© Kim Jung-Hyun237