Wind storminess in the Adriatic Sea in a climate change scenario

Abstract

In this work we assess the quality of the wind fields provided over the Adriatic Sea by the Regional Climate Model COSMO-CLM with reference to a control (CTR) period from 1971 to 2000 and to a future period from 2071 to 2100 under IPCC RCP 8.5 scenario (SCE), focusing on the implications for wave climate characterisation. Model skills have been assessed by comparing CTR results in terms of gross statistical properties and storm features against wind data from coastal observatories along the whole Italian Adriatic coast, showing a satisfactory capability of capturing the main features of mean observed seasonal variability. Significant achievements with reference to existing climatological models have been observed especially in terms of wind directionality, with unprecedented performances in reproducing the bimodal dominance of Bora (from northeast) and Sirocco (from southeast) in the northern basin, and the typical patterns of Bora jets flowing from the mountain ridges enclosing the Adriatic Sea on its eastern side. Future projections generally confirm the tendency to a decreasing energy trend envisaged by previous studies, with a more marked effect for extreme events in the northern basin. Based on the comparison between climatological wind fields and the results of a SWAN wave model run forced by COSMO-CLM, we also define and test a criterion for a rapid identification of some relevant case studies for dedicated wave modelling experiments, without the need of running entire climatological wave simulations. This permits to focus the analysis of climatological oceanographic extreme events to a limited number of selected cases, allowing remarkable saving of computational effort especially if an ensemble approach is desired.