A changing wave climate in the Mediterranean Sea during 58-years using UERRA-MESCAN-SURFEX high-resolution wind fields

Abstract

This study unravels 58-years (1961–2018) of wind-waves in the Mediterranean Sea (MS). A wave dataset was developed using the wave model WAVEWATCH III forced with the high-resolution (5.5 km) UERRA-MESCAN-SURFEX downscaled wind fields which better contain the imprint of the local geomorphology compared to other, coarser wind datasets used in previous studies. Thus, improving the reliability and characterization of the wind-wave climate in the basin. Validation results revealed a higher performance than previous datasets, particularly on the wave direction (θm), with a bias<1°. Climate variability at seasonal and interannual scales, wind-seas and swells distribution, and long-term trends in storminess and in the mean and extreme regimes were analysed. Results show a slight swell influence over the wind-sea in the hourly spectra at a large portion of the basin, excluding the wave generation areas. We detected that the western MS is the most storminess region with an average of three storms/year. Moreover, the anomalies of the seasonal mean wave direction relative to θm are large (∼60°), with opposing behaviours between the winter and summer. Finally, the long-term trends in the mean and extreme conditions and in storminess are mild with values reaching 6 cm/decade and less than 2% in the absolute value, respectively.