Potential Changes of the North Atlantic Wind and Wave Climate and Occurrence of Rogue Waves

The present study investigates potential changes of wind and wave conditions in one North Atlantic location in the 21st century. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses four scenarios for future greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere called Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP). Two of these scenarios with radiative forcing of 4.5 and 8.5 W/m² by the end of the 21st century have been selected to project wind and wave conditions in the North Atlantic. The third generation (3G) wave model WAM, forced by winds obtained from GFDL-CM3, EC-Earth, HADGEM2, IPS-CM5A-MR, MRI-GCGCM3 and MIROC5 climate models, has been used to project waves for these two scenarios for the historical period 1971–2000 and the future period 2071–2100. Long-term probabilistic description of wind and waves is provided and deviations between the past and future wind and wave conditions are demonstrated, given attention to the projections obtained by use of the GFDL-CM3 and EC-Earth climate models. Changes in extreme wind and waves are shown and uncertainties associated with climate change projections discussed. Occurrence of rogue-prone crossing sea states which may trigger generation of rogue waves in the past and future climate is also investigated.