LONGTERM TRENDS OF THE WAVE CLIMATE OFF THE COAST OF ROME

Wave statistics are essential for the correct design of any coastal and harbour project. Their definition has improved significantly in the last decades due to accurate extended buoy records and improved spectral synoptic hindcasting models. Amongst others (www.dicca.unige.it/meteocean/model.html) (Mentaschi et al, 2013), the reliable Copernicus ECMWF ERA5 spectral model (WW3) is now available over the Mediterranean Sea on hourly basis since 1959 with a mesh of 50 km. The coast near Rome in the Lazio Region is exposed to the semiclosed microtidal Tyrrhenian Sea with larger fetches from the southern sector. Prevailing winds come instead from the W and NW where fetches are smaller due to the natural protection of the two big islands of Corse and Sardinia. Various accelerometric buoys have been operating in different periods and these data have been used for an accurate calibration of the ERA5 model combined with SWaN for nearshore wave transfer with 10 km resolution (Bellotti et al. 2021).