Towards assessing the Adriatic Sea coastal vulnerability to regional climate change scenarios: preliminary results

CNR-ISMAR

Preliminary results from numerical climate simulations of the Adriatic sea at
high resolution (1/25°), performed during two time-slice integrations, are presented
for the period 1960-90 and the 21st century (2070-2100), according to the “A1b”
scenario defined by IPCC.
This aims at addressing the feasibility of downscaling procedure in a regional basin,
resolving features that are generally still not included when using global models and
gaining useful indications on climate-change induced impacts on the wave climate
and ocean circulation.
For this purpose, a fully coupled version of the ROMS-SWAN model has been implemented,
using interpolated meteorological forcings from the SINTA Project (SImulations
of climate chaNge in the mediTerranean Area, a joint scientific cooperation
of CMCC-INGV-Univ. of Belgrade).
Within the Impacts on Soil and Water Division (ISC) of the CMCC, the numerical
downscaling approach is integrated in a GIS-based Decision Support System
(DSS) aimed at the integrated analysis of climate change impacts and risks on coastal
zones at the regional, aimed at guiding decision-makers in the definition of adaptation
strategies.
Despite further experiments are needed to reach definitive results, the outcomes indicate
the feasibility of the numerical downscaling approach; nevertheless, they also
highlight uncertainties intrinsic to this approach that may be leading, at least at the
present state of the art, to results of difficult interpretation.

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