SKILL AND UNCERTAINTIES IN GCM-RCM WIND AND WAVE PROJECTIONS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

In the context of climate science, the Mediterranean Sea stands as a region characterized by significant local and regional variabilities and high vulnerability to climate change coastal impacts. As a result, it has been identified as a vulnerability hotspot (Ali, 2022). The projected changes in waves and their regional and local variability are critical in determining future coastal water levels and impacts. While past studies have relied on Global Climate Models (GCM) with low spatial resolution to analyze future wave climate changes, high-resolution Regional Climate Models (RCMs) projections can improve the characterization of wind and wave climate at a local scale. This is especially important for conducting coastal impact assessments and adaptation studies. This study presents the assessment of the skill and uncertainty of a multi-model ensemble of 33 GCM-RCM combinations for wind fields and wave climate modeled with different wave models for the historical period 1979 to 2005. We focus on quantifying the skill of wind fields and waves considering the role of the GCM forcing and RCM model, assessing the importance of temporal resolution in wind forcings for accurate extreme waves, comparing the performance of different wave models, and quantifying the inter- and intra-model uncertainties within the multi-model ensemble.