Abstract
Ireland has a highly energetic wave and wind climate, and is therefore uniquely
placed in terms of its ocean renewable energy resource. The socio-economic importance of the
marine resource to Ireland makes it critical to quantify how the wave and
wind climate may change in the future due to global climate change.
Projected changes in winds, ocean waves and the frequency and severity of
extreme weather events should be carefully assessed for long-term marine and
coastal planning. We derived an ensemble of future wave climate projections
for Ireland using the EC-Earth global climate model and the WAVEWATCH
III® wave model, by comparing the future 30-year period
2070–2099 to the period 1980–2009 for the RCP4.5 and the RCP8.5 forcing
scenarios. This dataset is currently the highest resolution wave projection
dataset available for Ireland. The EC-Earth ensemble predicts decreases in
mean (up to 2 % for RCP4.5 and up to 3.5 % for RCP8.5) 10 m wind speeds
over the North Atlantic Ocean (5–75° N, 0–80° W) by the
end of the century, which will consequently affect swell generation for the
Irish wave climate. The WAVEWATCH III® model predicts an
overall decrease in annual and seasonal mean significant wave heights around
Ireland, with the largest decreases in summer (up to 15 %) and winter (up
to 10 %) for RCP8.5. Projected decreases in mean significant wave heights
for spring and autumn were found to be small for both forcing scenarios
(less than 5 %), with no significant decrease found for RCP4.5 off the
west coast in those seasons.
Citation
ID:
137928
Ref Key:
gallagher2016advancestwenty-first