Will the wind associated with the Adriatic storm surges change in future climate?
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Will the wind associated with the Adriatic storm surges change in future climate? Iva Međugorac 1
&
Mira Pasarić 1
&
Ivan Güttler 2
Received: 8 May 2020 / Accepted: 11 September 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Flooding of the Adriatic coastline is predominantly caused by storm surges induced by winds from the south-eastern sector. This phenomenon in Venice is known as acqua alta. We present a study of wind fields favouring storm-surge setups in the Adriatic, including their characteristics in the present climate and their expected characteristics in future scenarios. Analysis is based on (i) measured sea levels in Venice and Bakar (1984–2014), (ii) near-surface wind from ERA5 reanalysis, and (iii) simulations of wind fields with three regional climate models (ALADIN52, RCA4, and RegCM4) forced with several global models (CNRM-CM, MPI-ESM-MR/LR, HadGEM2-ES, EC-EARTH, and IPSL-CM5). For future climates, we considered two scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) and two future periods (2041–2070 and 2071–2100) with respect to the historical 1971–2000 period. It was found that the probability that the frequency, intensity, annual cycle, and spatial structure of the wind inducing the Adriatic storm surges will change in future climates is small. The result is robust and consistent according to all considered criteria—it does not depend on the analysed regional climate models, boundary conditions, climate scenarios, or future time interval.
1 Introduction The Adriatic is the Mediterranean sub-basin surrounded by mountains. Its elongated shape, shallow closed end (< 50 m), and surrounding orography support atmospheric fields that give rise to storm surges that occasionally flood the coastline. Flooding occurs mostly in late autumn and during winter when the Mediterranean cyclones travel over the Adriatic, inducing an air pressure gradient and southeasterly wind (Sirocco). Both the meteorological forcings act in the same Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-020-03379-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Iva Međugorac [email protected] Mira Pasarić [email protected] Ivan Güttler [email protected] 1
Department of Geophysics, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Horvatovac 95, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
2
Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service, Grič 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
sense—they cause water to accumulate at the closed end of the basin, endangering many coastal cities (Robinson et al. 1973; Trigo and Davies 2002). The most vulnerable city is Venice, a city of great historical and cultural heritage, situated at the end of the longest Sirocco fetch and lying on the lowlevel ground. Significant effort has been engaged in order to model and predict storm-surge induced coastal flooding in the Adriatic, with the focus on the Venice lagoon (e.g. Bajo et al. 2007; Bajo and Umgiesser 2010; Bajo et al. 2019). However, cities south of Venice can also be cons
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