Markus Reinert, M.Sc.
Hi, I'm Markus Reinert, Ph.D. student in Physical Oceanography in the Estuarine and Coastal Ocean Processes group at IOW. I'm interested in the role of the ocean in the Earth's climate system. Read more about my research at IOW below, or take a look at my publication list.
E-mail address: markus.reinert@io-warnemuende.de
My current research project
The Arctic is one of the areas most affected by climate change, so the Arctic is the topic of my current research. I want to understand how Greenland's glaciers are melted by the ocean water below their ice tongues. My main tool for this are high-resolution numerical simulations with GETM, the General Estuarine Transport Model. My research is part of the project GROCE (Greenland ice sheet–ocean interaction) and associated to the project TRR 181: Energy Transfers in Atmosphere and Ocean.
We summarized the main findings of the GROCE project in a recently published synthesis paper:
Torsten Kanzow et al. (2025). The system of atmosphere, land, ice and ocean in the region near the 79N Glacier in northeast Greenland: synthesis and key findings from the Greenland Ice Sheet–Ocean Interaction (GROCE) experiment. The Cryosphere. DOI: 10.5194/tc-19-1789-2025 (open access)
My main contribution in this paper is the idealized high-resolution 3D model of a glacier fjord in Greenland, which we compare with other models and observations in Sections 3.13 and 4.11.
This 3D model is an extension of our idealized 2D model of the 79° North Glacier fjord, which we used to study the dynamics of the ocean currents melting the glacier. Furthermore, we demonstrated with this model how an adaptive model grid enables high resolution in the places where it is needed. Our results have been published in:
Markus Reinert, Marvin Lorenz, Knut Klingbeil, Bjarne Büchmann, Hans Burchard (2023). High-resolution simulations of the plume dynamics in an idealized 79°N Glacier cavity using adaptive vertical coordinates. JAMES. DOI: 10.1029/2023MS003721 (open access)
This study builds on our earlier work, where we used a 1D ocean turbulence model (GOTM) to study the vertical structure and entrainment of meltwater plumes under floating ice tongues and ice shelves:
Hans Burchard, Karsten Bolding, Adrian Jenkins, Martin Losch, Markus Reinert, Lars Umlauf (2022). The Vertical Structure and Entrainment of Subglacial Melt Water Plumes. JAMES. DOI: 10.1029/2021MS002925 (open access)
My publications on extreme sea level and storm surge
Jean-Baptiste Roustan, Lucia Pineau-Guillou, Bertrand Chapron, Nicolas Raillard, Markus Reinert (2022). Shift of the storm surge season in Europe due to climate variability. Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-12356-5 (open access)
Markus Reinert, Lucia Pineau-Guillou, Nicolas Raillard, Bertrand Chapron (2021). Seasonal shift in storm surges at Brest revealed by extreme value analysis. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans. DOI: 10.1029/2021JC017794 (free access)
My latest research cruise
From 17 to 28 April 2023, I joined the cruise EMB316 on research vessel Elisabeth Mann Borgese to the central Baltic Sea. Find some photos and information on the cruise in the blog entry at the SWOT-AdAC website.