Abstract
Abstract. The objective of the present work is to analyse how changes in wave patterns due to the effect of climate change can affect harbour agitation (oscillations within the port due to wind waves). The study focuses on 13 harbours located on the Catalan coast (NW Mediterranean) using a methodology with general applicability. To obtain the patterns of agitation, a Boussinesq-type model is used, which is forced at the boundaries by present/future offshore wave conditions extracted from recently developed high-resolution wave projections in the NW Mediterranean. These wave projections were obtained with the SWAN model forced by present/future surface wind fields projected, respectively, by five different combinations of global and regional circulation models (GCMs and RCMs) for the A1B scenario. The results show a general slight reduction in the annual average agitation for most of the ports, except for the northernmost and southernmost areas of the region, where a slight increase is obtained. A seasonal analysis reveals that the tendency to decrease is accentuated in winter. However, the inter-model variability is large for both the winter and the annual analysis. Conversely, a general increase with a larger agreement among models is found during summer, which is the period with greater activity in most of the studied ports (marinas). A qualitative assessment of the factors of variability seems to indicate that the choice of GCM tends to affect the spatial pattern, whereas the choice of RCM induces a more homogeneous bias over the regional domain.
Highlights
Climate change has become a major focus of attention because of its potential hazards and impacts on our environment in the near future
They were obtained with the SWAN wave model (Booij et al, 1999) forced by winds generated with five combinations of global (GCMs) and regional circulation models (RCMs) considering the A1B scenario of the 4th Assessment Report from IPCC (2007)
Spatial averaged decreases up to 5 % are obtained for the remaining models. These results highlight the large inter-model variability in terms of the harbour agitation, which was expected taking into account the variability already present in the forcing wave climate projections (Sect. 3.1), as pointed out by Casas-Prat and Sierra (2013)
Summary
Climate change has become a major focus of attention because of its potential hazards and impacts on our environment in the near future. SLR is not the only physical process of concern to coastal communities being affected by climate change. The greenhouse effect and the complex interactions of atmospheric processes may produce changes in near-surface wind and pressure patterns, potentially affecting the pattern of the wave field Aumann et al, 2008; Wang et al, 2009) suggesting that the number, intensity and location of storms will be modified Changes in wave period or direction would affect propagation processes such as shoaling, refraction and diffraction. They could induce changes in sediment transport patterns (potentially generating siltation)
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