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Transitional wave climate regions on continental and polar coasts in a warming world

Nature Climate Change volume 12, pages 662–671 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Wave climate is a primary driver of coastal risk, yet how climate change is altering wave climate is not fully understood. Here we identify transitional wave climate regions, coastlines with a future change in the occurrence frequency of a wave climate, with most of the regions located in south-western and eastern ocean basins. Analysis of the spatio-temporal changes in the atmosphere-driven major wave climates (the easterlies, southerlies and westerlies) under 2 emission scenarios for 2075–2099 and 2081–2099 shows increases in frequency from 5 to 20% for the easterly and southerly wave climates. The projected changes in these regions, in addition to sea-level rise and changes in storminess, can modify the general patterns of the prevailing wave climates and severely alter their coastal risks. Consequently, transitional wave climate regions should be recognized as areas of high coastal climate risk that require focus for adaptation in the near term.

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Fig. 1: Comparison of wave power in the ENSEMBLE projection.
Fig. 2: Comparison of mean wave direction in the ENSEMBLE projection.
Fig. 3: Analysis of wave climate area covered (%) in the ENSEMBLE projection.
Fig. 4: Transitional regions identified along continental coasts in the ENSEMBLE projection.
Fig. 5: Transitional regions along the Arctic coasts in the ENSEMBLE projection.
Fig. 6: Transitional regions along the Antarctic coasts in the ENSEMBLE projection.

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Data availability

The wave climate dataset downscaled from the CMIP5 experiments used in this study can be accessed at https://data.csiro.au/collection/csiro:13500 and http://search.diasjp.net/en/dataset/KU_wave_climate_projection_2022. All the data reported in the main text and supplementary information are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6482839.

Code availability

The figures were generated with MATLAB and Surfer (Golden Software). All the codes used in the data processing and visualization of the wave climates are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6482839. Other routines are available upon request from the corresponding author I.O.

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Acknowledgements

I.O. thanks everyone in N. Mori’s laboratory for their warm welcome in Japan. This work was made possible thanks to the financial support of DPRI research funds, JSPS KAKENHI (nos. 19K15099 and 19H00782) and the Integrated Research Program for Advancing Climate Models (TOUGOU Program: no. JPMXD0717935498) supported by MEXT (N.M.), and the Fondo CONACYT-SENER Sustentabilidad Energética grant no. FSE-2014-06-249795 through the Centro Mexicano de Innovación en Energías del Océano (CEMIE-Océano) (R.S.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, México

    I. Odériz & R. Silva

  2. IHCantabria - Instituto de Hidráulica Ambiental de la Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, Spain

    I. Odériz

  3. Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    N. Mori & T. Shimura

  4. Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    N. Mori

  5. Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

    A. Webb

  6. Aon Reinsurance Solutions, Macquarie Park, New South Wales, Australia

    T. R. Mortlock

  7. School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Macquarie Park, New South Wales, Australia

    T. R. Mortlock

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Contributions

I.O., N.M., T.S. and A.W. conceived the study. I.O. led the data collection and formal analysis and wrote the original draft of the manuscript. N.M. and T.S. provided the wave dataset downscaled from MRI-AGCM. N.M. supervised the study. N.M. and R.S. acquired the resources and funding. I.O., N.M., T.S., A.W., R.S. and T.R.M. discussed the results and reviewed and edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to I. Odériz.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Angel Amores, Sofia Caires and Gil Lemos for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1

Conceptual explanation of the method applied for a) historical conditions, b) projected scenarios RCP using the centroids calculated in (a).

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Text 1–3, Figs. 1–28 and Tables 1 and 2.

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Odériz, I., Mori, N., Shimura, T. et al. Transitional wave climate regions on continental and polar coasts in a warming world. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 662–671 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01389-3

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