Projected 21st century changes in extreme wind-wave events

Alberto Meucci; Ian R Young; Mark Hemer; Ebru Kirezci; Roshanka Ranasinghe

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaz7295

Projected 21st century changes in extreme wind-wave events

Sci Adv. 2020 Jun 10;6(24):eaaz7295. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz7295. eCollection 2020 Jun.

Authors

Alberto Meucci¹, Ian R Young¹, Mark Hemer², Ebru Kirezci¹, Roshanka Ranasinghe^{3

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Affiliations

¹ Department of Infrastructure Engineering, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia.
² CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, TAS 7001, Australia.
³ Department of Water Science and Engineering, IHE-Delft, P.O. Box 3015, 2610 DA Delft, Netherlands.
⁴ Harbour, Coastal and Offshore Engineering, Deltares, P.O. Box 177, 2600 MH Delft, Netherlands.
⁵ Water Engineering and Management, Faculty of Engineering Technology, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, Netherlands.

Abstract

We describe an innovative approach to estimate global changes in extreme wave conditions by 2100, as a result of projected climate change. We generate a synthetic dataset from an ensemble of wave models forced by independent climate simulation winds, enhancing statistical confidence associated with projected changes in extreme wave conditions. Under two IPCC representative greenhouse gas emission scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), we find that the magnitude of a 1 in 100-year significant wave height (H _s ) event increases by 5 to 15% over the Southern Ocean by the end of the 21st century, compared to the 1979-2005 period. The North Atlantic shows a decrease at low to mid latitudes (≈5 to 15%) and an increase at high latitudes (≈10%). The extreme significant wave height in the North Pacific increases at high latitudes by 5 to 10%. The ensemble approach used here allows statistical confidence in projected changes of extremes.

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