Uncertainty budget of Mediterranean storm surge projections for the XXIst Century

Trabajo presentado en la EGU General Assemby 2013, celebrada del 7 al 12 de abril de 2013 en Viena (Austria)Peer Reviewe

Future evolution of sandy beaches in a changing climate. The case of the balearic islands

The fate of the beaches around the world has a paramount importance as they are one the main assets for touristic activities and act as a natural barrier for coastal protection in front of marine storms. Climate change could put them at risk as sea level rise and changes in the wave characteristics may dramatically modify their shape. In this work, a new methodology has been developed to determine the flooding of sandy beaches due to changes in sea level and waves. The methodology allows a cost-effective and yet accurate estimation of the wave runup for a wide range of beach equilibrium profiles and for different seagrass coverage. This, combined with regional projections of sea level and wave evolution, has allowed a quantification of the future total water level and coastline retreat for 869 beaches across the Balearic Islands for the next decades as a function greenhouse gases emission scenario. The most pessimistic scenario (RCP8.5) at the end of the century yields an averaged percentage of flooded area of 66% under mean conditions which increases up to 86% under extreme conditions. Moreover, 72 of the 869 beaches of the region would permanently disappear while 314 would be completely flooded during storm episodes. Under a moderate scenario of emissions (RCP4.5), 37 beaches would permanently disappear while 254 would disappear only during storm episodes. In both cases, the average permanent loss of beach surface at the end of the century would be larger than 50% rising over 80% during storm conditions. The results obtained for the Balearic Islands can be extrapolated to the rest of the Mediterranean as the beaches in all the region have similar characteristics and will be affected by similar changes in sea level and wave climate. These projections indicate that adaptation plans for beach areas should be put in place as soon as possible

Antiguos puertos e islas en el litoral andaluz: cartografía, toponimia e historia

Se trata de recordar y agradecer las enseñanzas del Dr. Rosselló y aplicarlas a las costas andaluzas, de cuyas variadas formas llaman la atención los procesos de aterramiento de la parte atlántica, donde hay lugares cuya situación actual no responde a su topónimo (Isla Cristina, San Juan del Puerto...). A estudios anteriores, añadimos noticias históricas y trazados de mapas, que señalan una rápida evolución, referido principalmente a tres ámbitos. La desembocadura del Guadiana, que pasa en época histórica de barras arenosas e islas a zonas cultivadas y urbanizaciones de playas; el antiguo estuario del río Piedras, con puertos aún en el XIX, que sustenta hoy marismas, naranjales y cultivos de fresas; y las transformaciones similares de las rías del Odiel y Tinto (puerto colombino de Palos), a las que se unen instalaciones portuarias e industriales de Huelva

Evidences of Impacts of Climate Change on Mediterranean Biota

Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (projects ESTRESX CTM2012-32603 and CLIMPACT CGL2014-54246-C2-1-R). Ramón y Cajal contract (RYC-2013-14714) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the Regional Government of the Balearic Islands.Peer Reviewe

Atmospheric contribution to Mediterranean and nearby Atlantic sea level variability under different climate change scenarios

The contribution of atmospheric pressure and wind to the XXI century sea level variability in Southern Europe is explored under different climate change scenarios. The barotropic version of the HAMSOM model is forced with the output of the atmospheric ARPEGE model run under scenarios B1, A1B and A2. Additionally, a control simulation forced by observed SST, GHGs and aerosols concentrations for the period 1950-2000 and a hindcast forced by a dynamical downscalling of ERA40 for the period 1958-2001 are also run using the same models. The hindcast results have been validated against tide gauge observations showing good agreement with correlations around 0.8 and root mean square error of 3.2. cm. A careful comparison between the control simulation and the hindcast shows a reasonably good agreement between both runs in statistical terms, which points towards the reliability of the modelling system when it is forced only by GHG and aerosols concentrations. The results for the XXI century indicate a sea level decrease that would be especially strong in winter, with trends of up to - 0.8 ± 0.1. mm/year in the central Mediterranean under the A2 scenario. Trends in summer are small but positive (~. 0.05 ± 0.04. mm/yr), then leading to an increase in the amplitude of the seasonal cycle. The interannual variability also shows some changes, the most important being a widespread standard deviation increase of up to 40%. An increase in the frequency of positive phases of the NAO explains part of the winter negative trends. Also, an increase in the NAO variability would be responsible for the projected increase of the interannual variability of the atmospheric component of sea level. Conversely, the intra-annual variability (1-12. months excluding the seasonal cycle) does not show significant changes. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.This work has been carried out in the framework of the projects VANIMEDAT-2 (CTM2009-10163-C02-01, funded by the Spanish Marine Science and Technology Program and the E-Plan of the Spanish Government) and ESCENARIOS (funded by the Agencia Estatal de METeorología). Additional funding from the Platja de Palma Consortium is also acknowledged. G. Jordà acknowledges a “JAE-DOC” contract funded by the Spanish Research Council (CSIC).Peer Reviewe

Calibration of a wind wave hindcast (1958-2008) in the Western Mediterranean using buoy data

Trabajo presentado en la EGU General Assemby 2012, celebrada del 22 al 27 de septiembre de 2012 en Viena (Austria)Peer Reviewe

Temporal evolution of temperatures in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden based on in situ observations (1958–2017)

The Red Sea holds one of the most diverse marine ecosystems in the world, although fragile and vulnerable to ocean warming. Several studies have analysed the spatio-temporal evolution of temperature in the Red Sea using satellite data, thus focusing only on the surface layer and covering the last ∼30 years. To better understand the long-term variability and trends of temperature in the whole water column, we produce a 3-D gridded temperature product (TEMPERSEA) for the period 1958–2017, based on a large number of in situ observations, covering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. After a specific quality control, a mapping algorithm based on optimal interpolation have been applied to homogenize the data. Also, an estimate of the uncertainties of the product has been generated. The calibration of the algorithm and the uncertainty computation has been done through sensitivity experiments based on synthetic data from a realistic numerical simulation. TEMPERSEA has been compared to satellite observations of sea surface temperature for the period 1981–2017, showing good agreement especially in those periods when a reasonable number of observations were available. Also, very good agreement has been found between air temperatures and reconstructed sea temperatures in the upper 100 m for the whole period 1958–2017, enhancing confidence in the quality of the product. The product has been used to characterize the spatio-temporal variability of the temperature field in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden at different timescales (seasonal, interannual and multidecadal). Clear differences have been found between the two regions suggesting that the Red Sea variability is mainly driven by air–sea interactions, while in the Gulf of Aden the lateral advection of water plays a relevant role. Regarding long-term evolution, our results show only positive trends above 40 m depth, with maximum trends of 0.045 + 0.016 ∘C decade−1 at 15 m, and the largest negative trends at 125 m (−0.072+0.011 ∘C decade−1). Multidecadal variations have a strong impact on the trend computation and restricting them to the last 30–40 years of data can bias high the trend estimates.En prensa2,29

Assessment of Red Sea temperatures in CMIP5 models for present and future climate

The increase of the temperature in the Red Sea basin due to global warming could have a large negative effect on its marine ecosystem. Consequently, there is a growing interest, from the scientific community and public organizations, in obtaining reliable projections of the Red Sea temperatures throughout the 21st century. However, the main tool used to do climate projections, the global climate models (GCM), may not be well suited for that relatively small region. In this work we assess the skills of the CMIP5 ensemble of GCMs in reproducing different aspects of the Red Sea 3D temperature variability. The results suggest that some of the GCMs are able to reproduce the present variability at large spatial scales with accuracy comparable to medium and high-resolution hindcasts. In general, the skills of the GCMs are better inside the Red Sea than outside, in the Gulf of Aden. Based on their performance, 8 of the original ensemble of 43 GCMs have been selected to project the temperature evolution of the basin. Bearing in mind the GCM limitations, this can be an useful benchmark once the high resolution projections are available. Those models project an averaged warming at the end of the century (2080–2100) of 3.3 ±> 0.6°C and 1.6 ±> 0.4°C at the surface under the scenarios RCP8.5 and RCP4.5, respectively. In the deeper layers the warming is projected to be smaller, reaching 2.2 ±> 0.5°C and 1.5 ±> 0.3°C at 300 m. The projected warming will largely overcome the natural multidecadal variability, which could induce temporary and moderate decrease of the temperatures but not enough to fully counteract it. We have also estimated how the rise of the mean temperature could modify the characteristics of the marine heatwaves in the region. The results show that the average length of the heatwaves would increase ~15 times and the intensity of the heatwaves ~4 times with respect to the present conditions under the scenario RCP8.5 (10 time and 3.6 times, respectively, under scenario RCP4.5).En prensa4,41

Impact of the atmospheric climate modes on wave climate in the North Atlantic

Trabajo presentado en la EGU General Assemby 2014, celebrada del 27 de abril al 2 de mayo de 2014 en Viena (Austria)This study establishes the relationships between the mean modes of atmospheric variability in the North Atlantic and present wave climate. The modes considered, namely the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the East Atlantic pattern (EA), the East Atlantic Western Russian pattern (EA/WR) and the Scandinavian pattern (SCAN), are obtained from the NOAA Climate Prediction Centre. The wave data sets used consist of buoy records and two high-resolution simulations of significant wave height (SWH), mean wave period (MWP) and mean wave direction (MWD) forced with ERA-40 (1958-2002) and ERA-INTERIM (1989-2008) wind fields. The results show the winter impact of each mode on wave parameters which are discussed regionally. The NAO and EA pattern increase winter SWH up to 1 m per unit index at the Scottish and Spanish coasts, respectively, during their positive phase; while EA pattern causes clockwise changes of winter MWD up to more than 60 degrees per unit index at the Bay of Biscay during its negative phase. EA/WR and SCAN patterns have a weaker impactPeer Reviewe