Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Publication Date
19 August 2019

Robustness and Uncertainties in Global Multivariate Wind-Wave Climate Projections

Authors

Author

Understanding climate-driven impacts on the multivariate global wind-wave climate is paramount to effective offshore/coastal climate adaptation planning. However, the use of single-method ensembles and variations arising from different methodologies has resulted in unquantified uncertainty amongst existing global wave climate projections. Here, assessing the first coherent, community-driven, multi-method ensemble of global wave climate projections, we demonstrate widespread ocean regions with robust changes in annual mean significant wave height and mean wave period of 5–15% and shifts in mean wave direction of 5–15°, under a high-emission scenario. Approximately 50% of the world’s coastline is at risk from wave climate change, with ~40% revealing robust changes in at least two variables. Furthermore, we find that uncertainty in current projections is dominated by climate model-driven uncertainty, and that single-method modelling studies are unable to capture up to ~50% of the total associated uncertainty.
“Robustness And Uncertainties In Global Multivariate Wind-Wave Climate Projections”. 2019. Nature Climate Change 9: 711-718. doi:10.1038/s41558-019-0542-5.
Funding Program Area(s)