water

Article
Correction of ERA5 Wind for Regional Climate Projections of
Sea Waves
Alvise Benetazzo 1, * , Silvio Davison 1 , Francesco Barbariol 1 , Paola Mercogliano 2 , Chiara Favaretto 3
and Mauro Sclavo 4

1 Istituto di Scienze Marine (ISMAR), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), 30122 Venice, Italy;
silvio.davison@ve.ismar.cnr.it (S.D.); francesco.barbariol@ve.ismar.cnr.it (F.B.)
2 Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC), 81100 Caserta, Italy;
paola.mercogliano@cmcc.it
3 Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Edile e Ambientale (ICEA), Università degli Studi di Padova,
35122 Padua, Italy; chiara.favaretto@dicea.unipd.it
4 Istituto di Scienze Polari (ISP), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), 30172 Venice, Italy;
mauro.sclavo@ismar.cnr.it
* Correspondence: alvise.benetazzo@ismar.cnr.it

Abstract: This paper proposes a method to infer the future change in the wind-wave climate using
reanalysis wind corrected to statistically match data from a regional climate model (RCM). The
method is applied to the sea surface wind speed of the reanalysis ERA5 from the European Centre for
Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. The correction is determined from a quantile mapping between
ERA5 and the RCM at any given point in the geographical space. The issues that need to be addressed
to better understand and apply the method are discussed. Corrected ERA5 wind fields are eventually
used to force a spectral wave numerical model to simulate the climate of significant wave height. The
correction strategy is implemented over the Adriatic Sea (a semi-enclosed basin of the Mediterranean
Sea) and includes the present-day period (1981–2010) and the near-future period (2021–2050) under
Citation: Benetazzo, A.; Davison, S.; the two IPCC RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 concentration scenarios. Evaluation against observations of wind
Barbariol, F.; Mercogliano, P.; and waves gives confidence in the reliability of the proposed approach. Results confirm the evolution
Favaretto, C.; Sclavo, M. Correction toward an overall decrease in storm wave severity in the basin, especially under RCP8.5 and in
of ERA5 Wind for Regional Climate its northern area. It is expected that the methodology may be applied to other reanalyses, RCMs
Projections of Sea Waves. Water 2022, (including multi-model ensembles), or seas with similar characteristics.
14, 1590. https://doi.org/10.3390/
w14101590
Keywords: ERA5; wind waves; Adriatic Sea; sea states; bias correction
Academic Editors: Francesco
Gallerano and Giuseppe Pezzinga

Received: 5 April 2022

1. Introduction
Accepted: 12 May 2022
Published: 16 May 2022
Sea surface wind waves are an essential player in the coupled climate system [1]. The
physical processes affected by waves include, but are not limited to, fluxes of energy and
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
gas between sea and atmosphere (e.g., carbon dioxide), production of sea spray, Earth
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
albedo, and its influence on the overall radiation budget. While wave climate analyses are
published maps and institutional affil-
relevant to scientific studies, they are fundamental to various applications including hazard
iations.
assessments. For instance, wind waves have implications for coastal, near, and offshore
structures’ design and operation [2] and contribute to the impacts of storm surge events [3].
For these reasons, ongoing and future changes in the wind-wave climate have received
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.
growing attention for global and regional impact studies [4]. The present climate of wind
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. waves is commonly sourced from long-term qualified observations (in situ or satellite-borne)
This article is an open access article or model results, such as those provided by hindcast or reanalysis numerical simulations.
distributed under the terms and These are complemented by climate models for projection studies extending from the
conditions of the Creative Commons historical to future periods. Despite the specific assessment requirements, reanalysis and
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// climate model datasets can deliver valuable information on wind and wind waves.
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ Climate reanalyses combine past short-range weather forecasts with observations
4.0/). and provide a physically consistent source of parameters for the characterization of global

Water 2022, 14, 1590. https://doi.org/10.3390/w14101590 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/water

Water 2022, 14, 1590 2 of 26

climate and weather (e.g., [5]). Reanalyses include atmospheric, ocean, and land surface
variables in a comprehensive coupled system and produce data at sub-daily interval
spanning from the present to many decades back without any gap in time and space.
Reanalysis data are being used in many applications, from monitoring ongoing climate
change to research, policy-making, and business in renewable energy sectors. One of the
most advanced reanalysis products is ERA5 [6], distributed by the Copernicus Climate
Change Service at the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts ECMWF [7].
Many research centers are currently using ERA5 to release bulletins and studies on the
climate’s current (present day) conditions at global and regional scales. (see, e.g., [8]). To
maximize the benefits that ERA5 offers to the scientific community, ERA5 meteorological
variables can be bias-adjusted using observations (e.g., [9]). For wind-wave studies, ERA5
products were used with different approaches, which include the analysis of the native
wave products [10], the use of ERA5 wind to force a high-resolution wave model [11,12], or
downscaling wind over a limited area [13].
Climate models provide an alternative numerical approach to modeling climate and
weather systems at global and regional scales. The classical distinction is between fields pro-
duced by coarse resolution Global Climate Models (GCMs) and those by refined Regional
Climate Models (RCMs), which were essentially developed to downscale over a limited
area climate from GCMs [14]. GCM can describe the response of the climate to large-scale
forcings, such as those due to greenhouse gases. At the same time, RCM can refine the
large-scale information by accounting for the effects of sub-GCM grid-scale forcings and
processes, such as those due to complex topography, land-sea boundaries, or dynamical
processes occurring at the mesoscale (see the review by Giorgi [15]). GCMs and RCMs
reproduce the climate over multi-decadal scales, from the past to the projected future,
according to greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Often initialized at the onset of the 20th
century, GCMs and RCMs models provide a possible realization of the climate system,
consistent in terms of reproduced physical processes and setup of the numerical solutions.
Since the GCMs providing boundary conditions to the RCMs do not employ assimilation of
observed data, the simulated events are not in relation to the actual ones. Therefore, RCM
evaluation is generally made through climatological statistics over mid to long temporal
scales (e.g., months or seasons; [16]). The end-use compares statistics for future time slices
with those for the reference period to assess greenhouse gas forced change signal at the
local scale. For wind-wave projection studies, climate model wind is directly used to force
spectral wave model simulations [17,18].
Intending to investigate the change in the wind-wave climate, we explore the benefit
of correcting ERA5 wind to simulate the present day and the projected future climate
of sea states. For this purpose, reanalysis winds are adjusted to match (in a statistical
sense) those produced by a high-resolution RCM. For the wind correction, we rely on the
quantile-quantile matching method [19–21]. This method has been commonly used in the
literature to bias-correct the systematic errors of climate models using local observations or
reanalysis data as a reference. In particular, this approach was adopted to gain knowledge
in assessing the historical wind speed climate [22] and, under certain assumptions, the
future wind speed climate [23]. Correction methods are also effective when applied to wave
model data [24,25]. The correction strategy is herein used to produce a quantile-specific,
model-to-model transfer function determined by the relationship between ERA5 and RCM
cumulative distribution functions. The result is RCM-adjusted ERA5 wind fields for the
present-day period (1981–2010) and the near-future period (2021–2050). The two IPCC
RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 concentration scenarios are considered [26]. Since only model data
are considered in the quantile-quantile matching, the advantages and disadvantages of
this novel approach are discussed in the present study. Implicitly, this strategy also allows
judging historical RCM fields using the reanalysis. Furthermore, corrected winds are used
to predict the significant wave height fields and related climate by forcing a spectral wave
model implementation based on WAVEWATCH III® .
Water 2022, 14, 1590 3 of 26

The climate projections are used to simulate wind and wind-wave future changes over
the Adriatic Sea (Figure 1), as an implementation of the proposed methodology. This region
is challenging for the modeling of weather and climate systems, given the nature of the
atmospheric systems, combined with the complex orography [27]. The Adriatic Sea is a
long and narrow semi-enclosed basin, extending in the North Mediterranean Sea for about
800 km along the major axis from the south-east to the north-west, with a width of about
200 km. Gale-force winds in the Adriatic Sea are primarily of two types [28,29]. On the one
hand, southeasterly “Sirocco” winds blow over the Adriatic as a basin response to large-
scale weather events in the Mediterranean Sea. On the other hand, strong northeasterly
“Bora” flows are driven by the complex orography of the Dinaric Alps on the east of the
Adriatic and create finely structured jets with strong sub-basin scale spatial gradients.
Both types of winds generate energetic sea states (i.e., large wave heights). Still, Sirocco
storms may force higher and longer waves, eventually impacting the northern littoral,
close to Venice (Italy). Given this complexity, we adopt an implementation of the high-
resolution (about 8 km) atmospheric model COSMO-CLM [30] as a reference RCM, which
was proved to provide high accuracy in the climatological reproduction of all wind regimes
and sea states in the Adriatic Sea [31,32]. Other regional climate models were used to infer
the wind and wave future changes over the Adriatic Sea, such as the ones available at
the highest resolution (about 11 km) from the European (EURO) Coordinated Regional
Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) program [33,34] and the Adriatic Sea and
Coast (AdriSC) modeling suite [35]. Projection studies based on different climate models,
greenhouse gas emission scenarios, and future periods suggested that climate change will
likely produce a general decrease of wind-generated stormy waves in the Adriatic Sea,
from offshore [29,35–37] to the coast [32], also adopting an ensemble approach [38]. These
studies report that the change has significance for Bora waves, while for Sirocco waves
uncertainties remain.

Figure 1. The Adriatic Sea bathymetry (blue shading from 0 to −1250 m, in meters) and surrounding
orography (green-to-brown shading). Stations for observational field data (from north to south):
Acqua Alta oceanographic research platform (AA), Ortona wave buoy (OB), and Monopoli wave
buoy (MB). In the inset, the Mediterranean region with at its center the Italian peninsula. The blue
arrows sketch the approximate geographical position and direction of the principal northeasterly
Bora wind jets, and the orange arrow marks the direction of the southeasterly Sirocco wind.
Water 2022, 14, 1590 4 of 26

The remainder of the paper will proceed as follows. Section 2 is dedicated to presenting
numerical models (reanalysis, regional climate, and spectral wave) and measured datasets
used to infer the wind and wind-wave climate. This section also provides the principles
of the correction method adopted to adjust ERA5 reanalysis wind using present-day and
future RCM data. Section 3 is dedicated to the model data assessment with a specific focus
on the characteristic of the corrected ERA5 wind and related waves. Section 4 examines
the use of the corrected reanalysis to assess the projected future changes in the Adriatic
Sea wind and wave climate. An application on the storms offshore Venice is provided. A
discussion and summary of the study’s main results are presented in Section 5.

2. Datasets and Methods

2.1. Wind and Wave Observations
To assess the present-day wave model’s wind forcing and output, time series of
measured data are considered at three observatories in the Adriatic Sea (Figure 1). In the
northern sub-basin, wind velocity and significant wave height (Hs ) have been recorded on
a routine basis from the Acqua Alta oceanographic research platform (from now on AA;
see [39] for a detailed description of the station), which is located at 17 m depth, 15 km
offshore the city of Venice (coordinates: 45◦ 180 51.28800 N, 12◦ 300 29.69400 E). Values of Hs
are taken from the publicly available set after [40], which provides verified, three-hourly,
recorded values spanning almost continuously the years 1979 through 2018. The horizontal
components of wind speed are measured at 15-m height above mean sea level with a
VT0705B SIAP anemometer and averaged every 5 min (i.e., twelve values every hour).
Observed wind speed U was corrected to the standard 10-m height reference level (U10 )
by assuming winds occurred in near-neutral conditions. The Hs climate has been inferred
further south using wave buoy data recorded by the Italian national wave network at two
different locations, namely Ortona (central Adriatic Sea: 42◦ 240 5400 N, 14◦ 300 2100 E) and
Monopoli (south Adriatic Sea: 40◦ 580 30” N, 17◦ 220 3600 E). Buoys were operated from July
1989 to March 2008 and moored at a sea depth of approximately 100 m. For the sake of the
present study, the original time series of observed or model data (see following sections
for details) were re-sampled at a common temporal interval (either 1-h, 3-h, or daily) to
allow intercomparison. The reference time for all sources of data is UTC. Skill metrics
uses the following indicators for the comparison between time series of model data and
observations: mean error (ME, model minus observation), mean absolute error (MAE),
slope of the line of best fit in a least-square sense (Slope), and cross-correlation coefficient
(R). Model quantiles and probability distributions are also assessed. We remark that unlike
what is usually done in the bias-correction procedures (e.g., [20]), the set of observations is
herein used with the only purpose of cross-validating model outputs. In other words, these
will not be used for the statistical matching procedure proposed in this study.

2.2. ERA5 Reanalysis

For long-term climate studies, uniform model datasets are necessary. This require-
ment is fulfilled by the ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis. ERA5, the successor to ERA-Interim
(the previous 0.75◦ -resolution ECMWF reanalysis), provides global, hourly estimates of
atmospheric variables at a native lon/lat resolution of 0.28125◦ and 137 vertical levels from
the surface to 0.01 hPa. ERA5 presently extends from the present day back to 1979. It
includes the evolution of greenhouse gases, volcanic eruptions, sea surface temperature,
wind waves, and sea ice (quality-assured monthly updates of ERA5 are published within
three months of real-time). For storage issues, data have been gridded to a regular lat-lon
grid of 0.25◦ . At the time of writing, ERA5 data are available from the Copernicus Climate
Data Store [41]. For the present study, zonal and meridional components of the horizontal
wind speed U10 were downloaded for the 30 years spanning from 1981 to 2010 over a region
that encloses the Adriatic Sea and a large portion of the Mediterranean Sea surrounding
the Italian peninsula.
Water 2022, 14, 1590 5 of 26

In the open ocean, ERA5 skill for near-surface wind speeds U10 shows a 20% improve-
ment relative to ERA-Interim and a performance similar to that of current operational
ECMWF forecasts [42]. However, given the relatively coarse spatial resolution, ERA5
capacities are expected to degrade in semi-enclosed basins such as the Mediterranean Sea,
especially for the most extreme conditions, for which the strong spatial gradients happen
to be underestimated by modeled winds used to simulate wave fields [43]. At the 99th
percentile, the U10 model minus observation residual can be as low as −1.5 m/s [11]. This
limitation might be further amplified in narrow basins such as the Adriatic Sea [44]. Indeed,
ERA5 is inherently penalized compared to high-resolution models (10 to 5 km or less) that
provide not only more highly detailed geographical patterns but significantly stronger and
more accurate wind speeds (see, e.g., [13]).

2.3. COSMO-CLM Regional Climate Model

To understand how the global climate might respond to changing greenhouse gas
concentrations in the atmosphere, the most valuable tools are the Global Circulation Models,
with forcings prescribed according to, for instance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) scenarios [26]. However, typical horizontal resolutions of global GCMs are
around 50–80 km to 500 km, making them unsuitable for studies on a regional scale where
the local climate is affected by small-to-mid scale processes not fully resolved by global
models [45]. This problem is especially true for enclosed and semi-enclosed basins with
complex topography, such as the Adriatic Sea, where local meteorological events occur at
scales of a few kilometers [27]. In this context, the dynamical downscaling technique allows
a better description of the local climate, as it employs a Regional Climate Model nested
in a GCM (used as initial and boundary conditions) to generate high spatial resolution
information on a specific area of interest and time scales up to centuries [46].
For the present work, climatological wind forcings in the Adriatic Sea were produced
using the RCM COSMO-CLM (CCLM, [47]), the climate version of the operational, non-
hydrostatic mesoscale weather forecast model COSMO-LM [48], initially developed by the
German Weather Service and currently developed by the Climate Limited-area Modeling
Community in the framework of the Consortium for Small-scale Modeling (COSMO).
The COSMO-LM model is a non-hydrostatic limited-area atmospheric prediction model.
COSMO-LM is based on the primitive thermo-hydrodynamical equations describing com-
pressible flow in a moist atmosphere. The model equations are formulated in rotated
geographical coordinates and a generalized terrain-following height coordinate. A variety
of physical processes are considered by employing parameterisation schemes. The advan-
tage of the non-hydrostatic scheme is that it can be applied to any horizontal resolution,
thus allowing a better description of convective phenomena [49]. The non-hydrostatic
scheme enables a better representation of the local orography and the land-sea bound-
ary, which control local meteorological features such as the development of fetch-limited
winds [50,51]. For more details on the formulation of the model and the parameterisation
settings, the reader is addressed to the COSMO model documentation page [49,52–54].
Specifically, in the present work, we adopted a specific configuration of CCLM devel-
oped for the Italian and surrounding areas by the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate
Change (CMCC, Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici); more information
on this CCLM configuration (here and after CCLM-CMCC) are available in [30,55]. This
regional climate simulation is forced by the global climate model CMCC-CM [56], a coupled
atmosphere-ocean GCM, whose ocean component is the global ocean model OPA 8.2 [57]
with a horizontal resolution of 2◦ × 2◦ on 31 vertical levels. The atmospheric component is
the global atmosphere model ECHAM5 [58,59] with a T159 horizontal resolution, corre-
sponding to a Gaussian lon/lat 0.75◦ grid on 31 hybrid sigma-pressure levels. The coupling
between the atmospheric and the ocean models is performed via the Ocean-Atmosphere-
Sea Ice-Soil version 3 (OASIS3) coupler [60].
The CCLM-CMCC wind field (zonal and meridional components of U10 , available with
a daily temporal resolution) spans the Italian peninsula and a large portion of the surround-
Water 2022, 14, 1590 6 of 26

ing Mediterranean Sea (longitude range: [2◦ E–22.3◦ E]; latitude range: [35.7◦ N–47.6◦ N];
see Figure 2 for an example of two simulated sea storms), with a high spatial resolution
of 0.0715◦ (approximately 8 km). The Adriatic Sea is wholly included, and the computa-
tional domain extends further south of the Otranto Strait to cover the North Ionian Sea.
CCLM-CMCC was run with three forcing setups: (i) control run (CTR), from 1981 to 2010
to represent the present-day climate condition; (ii) representative concentration pathway
4.5 run (RCP4.5), which is described by IPCC [26] as an intermediate scenario for future
climate; (iii) representative concentration pathway 8.5 run (RCP8.5), which prescribes
emissions continuing to rise throughout the 21st century and is taken as the basis for
worst-case climate change scenarios. In our analysis, the near-future period covering the
years 2021–2050 is considered for projected changes compared to the present climate.

Figure 2. Example of near-surface U10 wind fields (colored shading, units in m/s) simulated by the
COSMO-CLM RCM over the Italian peninsula (at the center of the domain) and a portion of the
Mediterranean Sea. (A) Northeasterly Bora wind in the Adriatic Sea and Mistral wind in the northern
Mediterranean; (B) southeasterly Sirocco wind in the Adriatic Sea. The model wind is masked over
land, and direction vectors (black arrows) are decimated with a factor of 10 for the sake of clarity.

2.4. Spectral Wave Modeling

Wind-wave simulations were carried out with the latest version (version 6.07.1) of
the state-of-the-art spectral model WAVEWATCH III® (from now on WW3), released in
April 2019. WW3 [61,62] is a third-generation wave model developed and maintained
at the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NOAA/NCEP) in the spirit of the
WAM model [63,64]. Since model version 3.14, WW3 evolved from a wave model into
a wave modeling framework (open-source repository available [65]), which allows for
easy development of additional physical and numerical approaches to wave modeling.
WW3 solves the random phase spectral action density balance equation for wavenumber-
direction spectra. The implicit assumption of this equation is that properties of medium
(water depth and current) and the wave field itself vary on time and space scales that are
much larger than the variation scales of a single wave. The key steps of the implementation
phase are described as follows.
Spectral wave models require the definition of both a physical (x, y) and a spectral
grid (k, θ). For the physical grid, we have used a high-resolution grid of the Adriatic Sea
and the Ionian Sea (north of 39◦ N in Figure 1). The grid is structured (regular in lon-lat)
with 361 00647 280 nodes and square cells of 0.025◦ side length (corresponding to a linear
distance of 2 km in longitude and 2.8 km in latitude in the northern Adriatic). The model
bathymetry was obtained by interpolating a high-resolution bathymetric dataset of 0.0625◦
(80 m in the north of Adriatic [66]) on the grid. The bathymetric dataset itself was obtained
by harmonizing a very high-resolution survey (personal communication, CNR-ISMAR)
and the GEBCO relief (General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans, 330 m resolution). For
the future climate runs, the water level was uniformly raised by 0.12 m, by extrapolating,
Water 2022, 14, 1590 7 of 26

without distinction between RCPs, the present observed rate of Mediterranean sea level
rise (2.8 mm/year; [67]) to the 2021–2050 period. This choice does not introduce further
uncertainties and it is supported by the proximity of the future time period and by the
consideration that the rise is a small fraction of the water depth (always larger than
10 m, except in the more coastal regions) and has a negligible impact on wave dynamics.
Furthermore, no waves were prescribed to enter the computational domain from the
Mediterranean Sea. This assumption has no impact on the cross-basin Bora waves. In
contrast, it necessarily leaves to the growing waves a buffer of about 150–200 km further
south when the southeasterly Sirocco blows [37]. This choice guarantees that all the Adriatic
Sea states north of the Otranto Strait are correctly reproduced.
The spectral grid in the wavenumber and direction domains comprises 32 wavenum-
bers and 36 directions. The wavenumbers are related to intrinsic frequencies via linear
dispersion relation, which are geometrically distributed with an increment of 1.1 between
one frequency and the next and cover a range between 0.07 and 1.34 Hz. Such a frequency
range is convenient for the Adriatic Sea environment since it prioritizes a good representa-
tion of the short-wave components. The discrete directions are evenly distributed between
0◦ N and 360◦ N, with an interval of 10◦ and the first direction at 5◦ N. For the stability of the
numerical method adopted, the time discretization (four timesteps in WW3) is determined
automatically from the physical grid characteristics. In particular, the following time steps
Dt were used: Dt(global) = 600 s; Dt(x, y) = 150 s; Dt(k, q) = 300 s, Dtmin = 10 s. The wave
model has been implemented by setting, with default coefficients, the following principal
parametrization [68]: wind-wave interaction and dissipation due to deep-water breaking
as in WAM cycle four and updates to make the WW3 implementation as close as possible
to the one in the ECMWF wave model [69]; discrete nonlinear interaction approximation;
JONSWAP bottom friction formulation; higher-order propagation schemes with Tolman’s
averaging technique [70]. Although possible, we decided not to calibrate the model pa-
rameters since the interest mainly focuses on comparing projected future and present-day
wind sea states. However, wave model data were assessed using in situ observations for
the historical period. We analyzed the hourly values of the significant wave height Hs from
the 2D spectral representation in the lon-lat geographical space and temporal domain. The
value of Hs has been computed diagnostically as four times the square root of the variance
of the wave field and represents an integral measure of the energy of waves. The peak
direction of wave propagation was also considered to identify selected storms.

2.5. Climatological Constraint Condition for ERA5 Sea Wind

This section presents the statistical method used to correct the ERA5 wind speed
U10 using CCLM-CMCC data as a reference. It is worth reminding the reader that by
combining model data with observations, ERA5 has the advantage of reproducing at a
high-temporal resolution (1 h) the realistic sequence of historical meteorological events.
Therefore, the correction strategy aims to inherit the reanalysis sequence and temporal
resolution of sea storms as the basis for the historical and projected future wind and wave
climate characterization. The 1-h resolution allows for accurate reproduction of the wave
storm peak and shape, which is not guaranteed when employing a wind forcing with a
resolution of 6 h or more [37,43].
The method we used to climate-correct ERA5 wind speeds stems from the Quantile-
Quantile Matching approach (from now on QQM; [19–21,23]), which is a statistical down-
scaling technique initially developed to assess the information about the regional climate.
QQM is a prior probabilistic downscaling strategy with bias correction to deal with and
provide local-scale cumulative distribution function (CDF) of random climate variables
through a transformation applied to large-scale CDFs. QQM was used in climate change
studies as a probabilistic method to downscale GCM values using local observations or
model reanalysis of the present climate (for a review, see [71]). Unlike this traditional
approach, the QQM method was here used with a novel strategy, aiming to correct the
reanalysis to ensure that its CDF matches (in a stochastic sense) that of the climatological
Water 2022, 14, 1590 8 of 26

model datum for both the historical and the projected future periods. In the following
paragraphs, the datasets resulting from the climate-corrected ERA5 are labeled as ERA5c.
The advantage of QQM is that it potentially corrects all biases in the model CDF since
the transfer function is quantile-specific. This choice allows us to correct the percentiles
of average and extreme wind speeds separately [22,72]. Climate wave models forced by
bias-corrected winds significantly improved the simulated climate at different scales [18].
A disadvantage of posterior bias correction using the QQM method may be the physical
inconsistency of the corrected variables (e.g., wind speed and air temperature), as well as
the loss of spatio-temporal correlation of a given variable since each grid point is corrected
independently (i.e., the integrity of the forcing is not guaranteed). While the former does
not apply in our analysis (only one variable is constrained), the latter will be evaluated by
assessing the historical corrected winds and related waves against measured data.
In the historical climate experiment, time series of reanalysis wind speed U10 are
corrected using the RCM data (constraint condition), and relying on the QQM method,
for each grid point of the reanalysis, in order to account for the local wind weather and
the distance from the land-sea boundary. Assuming that both the RCM and the reanalysis
data are temporally stationary, this method constructs the respective CDFs and scales the
reanalysis wind in order to ensure that its CDF matches that of the RCM.
Let FE (U10(i) ), defined over the interval [0, 1], stand for the cumulative histogram value
from the reanalysis order statistics U10(i) , and FR (U10(i) ) the corresponding one for the RCM
dataset bi-linearly interpolated on the reanalysis points during the same period. FE (z) and
FR (z) are nonlinear and give the probability that the random variable Z is below or equal to
a given speed value z, i.e., Pr(Z ≤ z). The basic idea to adjust ERA5 speed U10 E is to find a
EC
corrected value U10 based on the assumption that
   
EC E
FR U10 = FE U10 . (1)

The constraint to the RCM in the present climate simulation is therefore given by
h  i
U10EC
= FR −1 FE U10
E
, (2)

where FR −1 is the inverse function of the CDF (see Figure 1 of [71] for a graphical interpre-
tation of the procedure).
For the future period, ERA5 winds are corrected assuming we know the constraint with
respect to the future, which is given by the climate model signal, as in the CDF-transform
method (CDF-t) proposed by Michelangeli et al. [23]. It is assumed that there exists a
transformation T allowing correcting the CDF of RCM winds into the CDF representing the
reanalysis variable. Let FEh stand for the CDF of reanalysis for the historical period and
FRh for the CDF of RCM outputs for the same period. FEf and FRf are the CDFs equivalent
to FEh and FRh but for a future period. The transformation T: [0, 1] → [0, 1] takes the
following form
T[FRh (z)] = FEh (z), (3)
and it can be then modeled as

T(u) = FEh [FRh −1 (u)], (4)

where u belongs to [0, 1]. Then, assuming that relationship in Equation (3) will remain
valid in the future, i.e., that T[FRf (z)] = FEf (z), and that we know FRf , the desired correction
of the CDF of ERA5 is written as follows:

FEf (z) = FEh {FRh −1 [FRf (z)]}. (5)

One can interpret Equation (5) as the ranked category of ERA5 speeds, which accounts
for the wind speed changes in the RCM between the historical period and the future period.
Water 2022, 14, 1590 9 of 26

From the algorithmic point of view, the QQM method has been used in the following
way. At first, we assume that the empirical estimates of CDFs from ERA5 and RCM
data are good estimators of the actual distributions. Moreover, since the transformation
that matches hourly ERA5 with hourly COSMO-CLM wind speeds is unknown, and we
instead relied on daily average quantities, we assume that the functions that constrain daily
average and hourly ERA5 winds are identical. This allows retaining the correction for daily
averages to scale ERA5 hourly data. Since QQM is applied to continuous model outputs,
no uncertainties will arise from sparse data.
The CDF is estimated at each ERA5 grid node over the COSMO-CLM computational
domain, based on the whole time series of daily average wind speeds U10 E . In practice,

CCLM-CMCC daily average wind speed meridional and zonal components (30 years from
1981 to 2010 and 30 years from 2021 to 2050, under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios) have
been bi-linearly interpolated on the ERA5 0.25◦ grid. To reduce gaps in the matching, the
histogram bins were set at 0.1% step, and linear interpolation is used to approximate values
between percentiles. The nonlinear correction factor CF takes the functional form given by
 
E
CF = CF U10 , lon, lat . (6)

Hence, we obtain that

EC E
U10 (lon, lat, time) = CF·U10 (lon, lat, time). (7)

Given that for the largest wind speed values the variability of percentile estimates
is relatively high [73], the CF has been estimated in the range between the 1st and 99th
percentile values, beyond which the CF was extrapolated (nearest neighbor interpolation).
Although the choice of keeping a constant CF for very high wind speeds can constrain
ERA5 values below an upper limit, it should not provide highly biased values for the
rarest and more extreme events [21]. Given this uncertainty, we did not consider fitting the
highest quantiles with a parametric distribution. However, the error committed is small
since the CF varies little for higher percentiles. Moreover, no smoothing was applied to the
empirical curves since the small-scale variability was generally within 1%.
An illustration of how QQM was applied helps elucidate the correction process.
Figure 3A shows the U10 quantiles at AA from CCLM-CMCC (blue markers) and ERA5
(red markers) model data against observations (OBS, years 2004–2010). One can note that
CCLM-CMCC quantiles for the historical period 1981–2010 over the whole range of speeds
(daily average from 0 m/s to about 19 m/s) are in good agreement with observations. This
skill indicates an overall good performance of the model for all regimes. On the other
hand, a large ERA5 underestimation of measured data are present at all quantiles. For
the correction, once the quantile of the reanalysis is obtained, the value of the RCM data
corresponding to the quantile is specified. Figure 3B, the shape of the empirical CF for
the historical period (CTR) as derived from Equation (2) is shown. After matching with
CCLM-CMCC, adjusted ERA5 speeds turn out to be enhanced (CF > 1). Except for the
lowest percentiles, the correction is the highest for the strongest winds (where it exceeds
+25%), compensating for the systematic decrease of the ERA5 performance for the more
intense storms. We further note that the minimum of CF is for speeds close to the 50th
percentile (about 2.5 m/s), for which we have no explanation. In the same panel, the shapes
of CF at AA for the two RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 future projections are also shown. These
curves and their use will be described later in this paper, but they anticipate that RCP8.5 is
corrected less than CTR and RCP4.5.
Water 2022, 14, 1590 10 of 26

Figure 3. Example of QQM between ERA5 and CCLM-CMCC. (A) Quantile-Quantile plot of ERA5
(daily average, da; red markers) and CCLM-CMCC (blue markers) wind speed data (U10 , in m/s)
against observations (OBS) at the Acqua Alta oceanographic platform (AA) for the years 2004–2010.
The two blue and red arrows point to an example of model values at the same quantile that are
matched (gray arrow). The dashed black line indicates the perfect 1:1 match between datasets.
(B) Dependence of the correction factor CF on the ERA5 wind speed for the years 1981–2010 (CTR,
black line) and 2021–2050 (RCP4.5, green line; RCP8.5 orange line). The thin, light gray lines show
the CTR values below the 1st percentile and above the 99th percentile that are replaced by the nearest
value within those two limits.

3. Model Assessment
3.1. ERA5 Wind
An evaluation of the ERA5 wind speed U10 against observations in the North Adriatic
Sea (AA platform) is shown in Figure 4A. ERA5 performance (i.e., underestimation) heavily
depends on the adopted threshold. The model minus observation error is smaller (i.e., larger
in absolute value) than −5 m/s above 20 m/s. Overall, the mean error ME is −0.59 m/s,
the mean absolute error MAE is 1.49 m/s, and the slope of the line of best fit is 0.79. At the
highest percentiles, the data scatter presents a unimodal shape compared to observations,
which one can interpret as evidence that Bora and Sirocco storms are underestimated by a
similar amount. Although they are representative of a single location, these poor scores
suggest that without a correction, ERA5 data cannot be used for a reliable characterization
of the most severe wind and wave regime over the Adriatic Sea. However, the high level of
dependence between ERA5 and observed speeds (the correlation coefficient R is 0.81) and
the good representation of the wind directions (Figure 4B) suggest that conveniently scaled,
ERA5 is appropriate to provide realistic forcings to a spectral-wave model. Regarding
the wind direction, there seems to be a clockwise rotation of about 10◦ of ERA5 winds
compared to measurements, for which a misalignment with respect to the true north might
be present. Both model and measured data highlight that orography has a substantial
impact on local winds, being clear the dominance of northeasterly cross-basin Bora and
southeasterly along-basin Sirocco regimes.

3.2. CCLM-CMCC Wind

The simulated climatic scenario for the historical period 1981–2010 has been evaluated
by comparing the wind statistics (climatology and probabilities) with observations. Regard-
ing the climatology of the model, Figure 5 shows the annual cycle (months from 1 to 12)
of the monthly average and monthly 99th percentile of U10 computed by CCLM-CMCC
(blue line) and derived from observations (black line). In agreement with previous studies
based on RCMs in the Adriatic Sea [31,36,37], the annual cycle shows great year-to-year
Water 2022, 14, 1590 11 of 26

variability, and the model well reproduces it. Overall, no systematic model bias to be con-
sidered appears evident in ordinary and stormy conditions. Given the relative proximity of
the AA platform to the coast, this result gives confidence in the capability of CCLM-CMCC
in reproducing the winds just offshore the coastal regions. Performance of the analogous
CCLM-CMCC implementation over the Adriatic Sea for the present-day period was also
assessed in [31], which verified significant achievements in terms of wind directionality,
with unprecedented performance of this regional climate model in reproducing the bimodal
dominance of Bora and Sirocco weathers.

Figure 4. Performance of ERA5 horizontal wind speed and direction. Comparison with in situ
observations (OBS) in the northern Adriatic Sea (Acqua Alta oceanographic platform, AA) during
years 2004–2010 (total entries: 60,331). (A) Scatter diagram (color shade, linear scale) and quantile-
quantile plot (Q-Q, red markers) of U10 (in m/s) at 1%-interval up to 99th and 0.1% interval above.
Mean error (ME), mean absolute error (MAE), and slope (Slope) of the line of best fit (thick black)
are shown in the plot area. The dashed black line indicates the perfect 1:1 match between datasets.
(B) Relative frequency histogram of wind direction of flow from OBS (black line) and ERA5 (red line).
The directional sectors of Bora and Sirocco are labeled.

Figure 5. Climatology of the wind speed (U10 , in m/s) for the present-day period from CCLM-CMCC
data (CTR run, blue line) and in situ observations (OBS, black line) in the northern Adriatic Sea
(Acqua Alta oceanographic platform, AA). Climatological mean value (solid line) and year-to-year
variability (denoted by the standard deviation about the mean; cross markers) of the monthly average
(A) and monthly 99th percentile (B). For clarity, the vertical scale changes between the two panels.
Water 2022, 14, 1590 12 of 26

The frequency distribution of wind speed (Figure 6A) features very good agreement
between CCLM-CMCC and observations over the full range of speeds. On the other hand,
as shown above, ERA5 substantially underestimates the occurrence probabilities above
6–7 m/s and it achieves lower speeds than CCLM-CMCC. From the histogram of wind
direction in Figure 6B, one may notice that prevailing CCLM-CMCC winds are triggered
by northeasterly Bora storms. The peak’s observed and model flow direction (around
230◦ N) are consistent, accounting for the mentioned angular difference. We note the good
match between historical CCLM-CMCC and ERA5 directions, and between CCLM-CMCC
historical and near-future (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) directions. The directional agreement can
also be found at the basin scale (Figure 7), where there is an evident control of northeasterly
winds in the north and southeasterly winds in the central Adriatic, marking the regions
where Bora and Sirocco dominate, respectively. The effect of the native resolution of ERA5
is visible (Figure 7A), whose 0.25◦ fields are less able to reproduce the small-scale features
of surface winds at the land-sea boundary, near the coasts, though consistent with those of
CCLM-CMCC over all periods (Figure 7B–D). It is worth noting that for future projections
to the end of the 21st century, the steadiness of directions for the extreme Bora sea states
does not seem to be guaranteed [35].

Figure 6. Performance of CCLM-CMCC horizontal wind speed and direction (CTR run, blue line).
Comparison with in situ observations (OBS, black line) and ERA5 data (red line) in the northern
Adriatic Sea (Acqua Alta oceanographic platform, AA). (A) Relative frequency histogram of daily
average (da) wind speed (U10 , in m/s). (B) Relative frequency histogram of daily average wind
direction of flow. For comparison, future scenario simulations’ histogram values from RCP4.5 and
RCP8.5 are shown with black and yellow markers, respectively.

Figure 7. Mode (most probable value) of the wind direction of flow from ERA5 (A); daily average,
da) and CCLM-CMCC (present-day CTR, and future projections RCP4.5 and RCP8.5; (B–D)).
Water 2022, 14, 1590 13 of 26

3.3. ERA5c Wind

Before going into details of the corrected ERA5 wind fields, it is convenient to sum up
the attributes of the correction method in order to help interpret the model performance.
First, the ERA5c dataset may answer the question as to how past storms would behave
under climate change. The present-day climate fluctuations also represent the future year-
to-year variability of the system, and only the external climate forcing effects are extracted
from the model estimates of the scenario. In other words, the assessment of the regional
climate responses is not affected by the changes in internal variability. This condition
applies not only to long-term climate simulations but also to short-term event simulations.
Moreover, by scaling wind speeds, information on future climate is available only for
the intensity of storms, while their temporal structure and directional properties are not
handled. This assumption is reasonable in a semi-enclosed basin, such as the Adriatic
Sea, where the wind field structure is mainly controlled by the geographical land-sea
distribution [27,74]. The steering is reproduced by numerical models with fine grid spacing,
which allow an accurate description of the orography and a better representation of small-
scale physics. This condition is fulfilled by the regional climate model CCLM-CMCC and
the reanalysis ERA5, as shown in the previous sections. However, the invariance of the
wind patterns may be no longer valid for projections to the distant future (toward the end
of the 21st century, for instance), when, for a specific emission scenario, a marked projected
change in the atmospheric properties at the synoptic scale can be found [33]. This issue is
common to bias correction techniques applied to future climates very different from the
present [15].
Furthermore, over the Adriatic Sea, dominant northeasterly Bora and southeasterly
Sirocco winds were quantile-corrected with the same set of coefficients; that is, CF was
not fashioned depending on the wind direction. This shape of CF might produce a mis-
estimation in regions where the wind climate is not unimodal in direction. In the North
Adriatic (AA platform), where the wind direction distribution is bimodal, an analysis
we made has shown that directional differences are small. With respect to the corrected
winds computed from all directions, we have found that northeasterly would experience
a −0.2 m/s correction at 50th and 99th percentiles, while for southeasterly the difference
would be −0.2 m/s and +1.5 m/s at 50th and 99th percentiles, respectively. The overall
good performance of ERA5c confirms the validity of such an approach for all regimes.
However, we expect an even better matching by further partitioning to account for the
wind direction and allowing a smooth transition among regimes. Separation is also possible
for the seasons using separated CFs, even though in the Adriatic Sea, the most energetic
Bora and Sirocco storms typically occur in winter. All this said, we must keep in mind that
by increasing the dimensionality of the statistical correction, the physical consistency of the
resulting fields is degraded. As the goal is to use the wind fields to force a physically based
spectral wave model, the inconsistencies might be alleviated. For the future period, the
independence of CF from the wind direction is allowed if the different regimes undergo an
even change. We verified this condition in the northern Adriatic, where previous studies
showed, for the distant future (end of the 21st century), a possible shift in the interplay of
Bora and Sirocco waves [32]. At AA, the CF values from the overall and northeasterly winds
are consistent under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 compared to CTR. This agreement is also found
between overall and southeasterly winds under RCP4.5. On the other hand, under RCP8.5,
the southerly storm conditions (speed greater than about 10 m/s) might be underestimated
by the adopted correction strategy.
The effect of the statistical correction of the ERA5 wind speed fields over the Adriatic
Sea for the present-day period is shown in Figure 8. The geographical patterns of ERA5
(Figure 8A) and climate-corrected ERA5 (ERA5c, Figure 8B) average winds are very similar,
but the latter provides higher speeds over every sub-basin; indeed, as mentioned before, CF
is always greater than unity and shows a substantial regional dependence (Figure 8C). The
increase is greatest close to the land-sea boundary (up to +50%) near the Italian coasts (West
Adriatic), where the high-resolution CCLM-CMCC data allows for improved reproduction
Water 2022, 14, 1590 14 of 26

of the offshore and onshore wind conditions. High values of CF (from 1.2 to 1.3) also
characterize the regions with strong winds, for instance, along the northeasterly Bora
wind jets in the north and central basins. Areas with dominant Sirocco (see Figure 2)
and between jets are corrected less (CF~1.1 to 1.2). This correction is similar to the one
(CF = 1.11, obtained with a least-square fitting) applied to ECMWF operational forecast
winds (9-km resolution) for the simulation of the October 29, 2018, exceptional Sirocco
event in the Adriatic Sea [75]. We finally note that despite the fact that the QQM statistical
method is technically blind to the source of the difference between the datasets that are
quantile mapped, we recognize that this is the spatial resolution that penalizes ERA5 in the
semi-enclosed Adriatic Sea.

Figure 8. Statistical correction of historical (1981–2010) ERA5 wind speed (U10 , in m/s, hourly) over
the Adriatic Sea and the northern Ionian Sea. 30-year average from ERA5 (A), 30-year average from
ERA5c (B), and weighted average of the nondimensional correction factor CF (C).

Using the QQM method may raise the question as to whether the climate signal from
CCLM-CMCC is preserved in the adjustment of ERA5. Figure 9 shows the comparison be-
tween the annual mean 50th and 99th percentiles of U10 from CCLM-CMCC (Figure 9A,D),
daily average ERA5c (Figure 9B,E), and hourly ERA5c (Figure 9C,F). For CCLM-CMCC,
the annual mean 50th percentile shows a clear northwest-to-southeast negative gradient,
with Bora-like conditions in the northern and central Adriatic never exceeding 4 m/s. In
contrast, maxima are dominated by long-fetched, persistent wind sea conditions in the
south, with values above 5 m/s. On the other hand, the annual mean 99th percentile is
dominated in the north by short fetched, orography-dependent winds funneled through
gaps in the Dinaric Alps of the eastern coast, where the strongest Bora jets reach values
around 17 m/s in the northern Adriatic and 16 m/s in the central Adriatic, while Sirocco
wind speeds in the south never exceed speeds of 16 m/s. There is a substantial similarity
between CCLM-CMCC and ERA5c. The latter preserves the climate signal of U10 , even
though there are local ERA5c minus CCLM-CMCC differences, which are about +0.5 m/s
at most for the 50th percentile. The absolute difference at the 99th percentile is smaller and
below 0.3 m/s. The likely reason for this mismatch at both percentiles is that the correction
defined on the averages and then applied to the hourly data does not preserve the mean
values since the CF is not constant over speeds. Therefore, the daily average of corrected
winds is slightly different from the correction of daily average winds. This difference
may be used to quantify the effect of the assumption we made on the similarity between
daily average and hourly matching functions. Finally, Figure 9C,F show the same statistics
from ERA5c hourly data; they indeed give higher values than their daily counterpart and
provide peak values (99th percentile) of 18 m/s and 17 m/s in the northern and central
Adriatic and around 17 m/s in the southern Adriatic.
Water 2022, 14, 1590 15 of 26

Figure 9. Wind speed climate over the Adriatic Sea and the northern Ionian Sea for the years
1981–2010. Average of annual 50th (A–C) and 99th (D–F) percentiles of U10 (in m/s). (A,D) CCLM-
CMCC data from the control run (CTR); (B,E) daily averaged (da) ERA5c data; (C,F) ERA5c hourly
data (1 h). For clarity, color scales change between (A–C) and (D–F).

To further evaluate the effect of QQM, we used the set of observed data to assess the
winds after correction and the corresponding wind-generated waves. Figure 10B shows that
in the northern Adriatic Sea (AA platform), the time series comparison between observed,
ERA5, and ERA5c sequence of storms reveals an improved model performance at all
speeds and wind directions (both Bora and Sirocco weathers) for the climate-corrected
ERA5c dataset, which largely compensates for the systematic underestimation of ERA5.
Figure 10A depicts the scatter diagram and the quantile plot between observations and
ERA5c, which mark the very good performance of the present-day ERA5c at all speeds
(ME = 0.15 m/s and Slope = 0.96). The scatter spread does not seem to be reduced by the
correction procedure, probably because it is associated with the timing of events and with
the small-scale atmospheric patterns not well reproduced by the native ERA5.

3.4. Waves
Wave model results display similar skills to those seen for ERA5c wind. Figure 11
shows the comparison (scatter and quantile plots) of measured and modeled values Hs
at AA and the two wave buoys of Ortona and Monopoli. In all three locations, the wave
model provides a slight overestimation of the average wave energy, being the ME for
Hs < +0.04 m, and the MAE about 0.2 m on average; the Slope is at least 0.98 at AA and 1.08
at most in the southern part of the Adriatic Sea (Monopoli buoy). The performance of this
wave model is similar to that obtained in the Adriatic Sea by a dedicated high-resolution
hindcast purposely developed to reproduce the sea states over the entire Mediterranean
Sea [76].
Water 2022, 14, 1590 16 of 26

Figure 10. Performance of ERA5c wind speed (U10 , in m/s). Comparison with in situ observations
(OBS) in the northern Adriatic Sea (Acqua Alta oceanographic platform, AA) during years 2004–2010.
(A) Scatter diagram (color shade, linear scale) and quantile-quantile plot (Q-Q, red markers) at
1%-interval up to 99th and 0.1% interval above. Mean error (ME), mean absolute error (MAE), and
slope (Slope) of the line of best fit (thick black) are shown in the plot area. The dashed black line
indicates the perfect 1:1 match between datasets. (B) Example of time series comparison between
measured (gray area), ERA5 (red line), and ERA5c (green line) speeds. Two Sirocco and Bora storms
are indicated in the plot area.

Figure 11. Performance of the WW3 model significant wave height. Comparison between model
Hs (in meters) against platform (Acqua Alta, total entries: 57,202; (A)) and buoy data (Ortona, total
entries: 45,346; Monopoli, total entries: 47,707; (B,C)). Wind forging is provided by ERA5c. Scatter
diagram (color shade) and quantile-quantile plot (red markers) at 1%-interval up to 99th percentile
(indicated with a filled marker), and 0.1%-interval above. Mean error (ME), mean absolute error
(MAE), and slope (Slope) of the line of best fit (solid black) are shown in the plot area. The dashed
black line indicates the perfect 1:1 match between datasets.

4. Application to Wave Climate Scenarios over the Adriatic Sea

4.1. Basin Scale Analysis
Projected future evolutions of the wind and wave climate over the Adriatic Sea by
the middle of the twenty-first century (2021–2050) are assessed from a single GCM-RCM
and for two representative concentration pathways, namely a medium (RCP4.5) and a
high-emission scenario (RCP8.5). As before, we focus on the 50th (median value) and 99th
percentiles and consider them to be representative of the typical and the extreme climates,
respectively. For the selected quantities, statistics was computed for each year and averaged
over the entire period to provide an annual average value (30 samples for each simulation).
The impact of the projected climate is expressed by considering the relative change for the
Water 2022, 14, 1590 17 of 26

period 2021–2050 compared to the period 1981–2010. We provide an assessment of the U10
change first; then, we focus on the Hs fields obtained by forcing the high-resolution WW3
model with the climate-corrected ERA5c winds. The stochastic significance of the projected
change is assessed using the Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney U-test with sample size N = 30 and
significance level α = 0.1 [77].
Figure 12 shows the results for the sea surface wind speed U10 from CCLM-CMCC.
The present-day statistics are shown in Figure 12A (annual average of the 50th percentile)
and Figure 12D (annual average of the 99th percentile). Relative changes under RCP4.5
(Figure 12B,E) and RCP8.5 (Figure 12C,F) exhibit characteristic spatial patterns, but the
latter shows generally larger maximum changes. A weak signal of projected changes (~1%)
of the annual average 50th percentile of U10 is depicted for both scenarios, resulting in
decreased speeds under RCP4.5 and increased speeds under RCP8.5. Except for a few
sporadic places, these changes are statistically not significant. A more robust and spread
decrease at the basin scale is seen for the stormy events (99th percentile). The change is
biggest in the north (up to −8% and −5% for RCP8.5 and RCP4.5, respectively), while it is
smaller (~−3%) in the mid-Adriatic region, where along-basin winds eventually dominate
the weather.

Figure 12. Climatology of the sea surface wind speed (U10 , in m/s) for the present day (1981–2010;
(A,D)) and projected relative changes for the near-future period 2021–2050 under RCP4.5 (B,E) and
RCP8.5 (C,F) scenarios. Annual average of the 50th percentile (A–C) and 99th percentile (D–F) from
CCLM-CMCC model fields over the Adriatic Sea and the North Ionian Sea. The black contours in
(B,C,E,F) show the Mann–Whitney probability p-value of 0.1.

These wind variations are similar to those found by Bonaldo et al. [31] under RCP8.5
for the end of the 21st century (2071–2100). The authors found a −10% decrease across the
Adriatic Sea, although mainly with a stronger reduction along the Bora jets patterns. For the
same scenario (RCP8.5) but a different future period (2041–2070), Belušić Vozila et al. [33]
used an ensemble with nineteen members to find that the number of Bora events in the
northern Adriatic may be reduced, though intensities may be higher. However, a spread
between the members was observed, suggesting the need for multi-model simulations to
assess the significance of the projected wind/wave simulations, particularly for the distant
Water 2022, 14, 1590 18 of 26

future [17]. For completeness, we report that the multi-decadal historical observations
from AA (1979–2015; [78]) showed, on the one hand, a tendency toward a reduction of the
wave activity in the northern Adriatic Sea and, on the other that the decrease of intensity is
mainly due to Bora regimes (particularly in the upper percentiles). Later in this section,
we will focus on separating the north-east (Bora) and south-east (Sirocco) storm events by
characterizing the long-term wave statistics in front of the Venice littoral.
Since the local winds determine surface waves in the Adriatic Sea, a similar geo-
graphical pattern for the variations has been obtained from the wave model simulations
(Figure 13B–F). This similarity is not necessarily valid for the annual mean values of 50th
and 99th percentiles for the present-day period (CTR run, Figure 13A,D), which show a
statistical dominance of along-basin sea states (SE-NW directions) compared to northeast-
erly Bora ones due to the effect of the longer fetch available for waves to grow [79]. On an
annual average base, the roughest stormy conditions occur in the southern Adriatic (Hs up
to about 4 m for the 99th percentile), while in the central and northern parts of the basin,
conditions are milder (Hs < 3.5 m and Hs < 3 m, respectively). Similar patterns, but with
less intense waves, from ERA5-based hindcast simulations (1981–2019) were found in the
Adriatic Sea by Barbariol et al. [12] who extended the analysis to the whole Mediterranean
Sea. The geographical distribution of stormy Hs does not necessarily match the one where
the maximum Hs may occur, e.g., offshore the northeastern Italian coast during Bora storms
or offshore Croatia during Sirocco storms. For this specific topic in a projected climate, the
reader is directed to Denamiel et al. [35].

Figure 13. Climatology of the significant wave height (Hs , in meters, hourly) for the present day
(1981–2010; (A,D)) and projected relative changes for the near-future period 2021–2050 under RCP4.5
(B,E) and RCP8.5 (C,F) scenarios. Annual average of the 50th percentile (A–C) and 99th percentile
(D–F) from WW3 model fields over the Adriatic Sea and the North Ionian Sea.

Projected to the near future (2021–2050), typical significant wave heights (50th per-
centile) show minimal changes (<3%) for both scenarios (Figure 13B,C), although RCP4.5
indicates slightly negative variations in the central/north part of the basin. A decrease
of extreme significant wave height (99th percentile; Figure 13E,F) up to −10% is visible
Water 2022, 14, 1590 19 of 26

in the northern part of the Adriatic. Weaker changes (around −5%) are reproduced for
the central and southern parts of the basin. RCP8.5 produces generally greater changes
than RCP4.5, albeit locally, the opposite also holds (e.g., along the Croatian coast). This
widespread decrease in wave energy confirms previous scenario analyses conducted in the
same area with different models and projection strategies [32,35,37,38,80].
These results can be placed in a broader perspective. The connection between the
Adriatic Sea wind and wave regimes and the Mediterranean area behavior is straightfor-
ward [81], but less simple is the relationship on the larger scale, for instance, with the
North Atlantic Ocean [78], and this is beyond the scope of the present study. However,
we point out that projected changes in Sirocco weather may indicate a variation of the
cyclogenesis in the central-western Mediterranean Sea and the movements of cyclones
southeastward. These low-pressure systems also generate Bora winds, driven by high
pressure over central Europe [82]. The frame is further complicated by pressure lows and
resulting local winds passing over the Adriatic Sea [44,83]. This complexity and its relative
changes in the mid-to-long-term future have practical applications such as for instance, the
impact on the coasts [84]. Indeed, wind-wave climate changes, together with sea level rise,
are the main hazard to coastal stability, especially in the case of sandy coasts [85]. This is the
case for the central and northern Italian coast facing the Adriatic Sea. Particular relevance
can be given to the sea area surrounding the Venice lagoon (Figure 1), where the Mo.S.E.
multiple barriers system at the lagoon’s three inlets ([86]) has been operational since 2020
to protect the historical city of Venice and its lagoon from the extreme surges associated
with Sirocco events [87].

4.2. Extreme Value Analysis Offshore Venice (Italy)

We may want to use the projected wave storms to assess what might be the sea
state conditions just offshore the Mo.S.E. barriers during their first 30 years of operation.
Propagated shoreward and eventually inside the inlets, the wave heights would help define
the loads on the structures. For this analysis, we have selected a location offshore the middle
inlet (called “Malamocco” by the locals), where the depth is about 14 m (Figure 14). For the
present-day simulation covering 1981–2010, the 30-year long time series of hourly values of
Hs has been analyzed to infer the local wave climate. The statistics of extreme values of the
significant wave height has been estimated following the peak-over-threshold approach
(POT; [88]), where the maximum value of Hs in each of a large number of individual storms
is considered. A storm is defined as an uninterrupted sequence of Hs values exceeding
a specific threshold. Following [89], the threshold for storm identification was set equal
to 1.5 times the 30-year average Hs . Storms with successive peaks that occur within less
than 10 h were aggregated together to ensure stochastic independence. The peak of Hs for
each storm was defined as an extreme value for the characterization of the wave climate.
Finally, to isolate the more energetic storms, only Hs values above 2 m were considered for
the determination of the empirical probability curves.
The extreme value analysis was made of both the entire, omnidirectional time series
and the storms coming from the two angular sectors (0◦ N, 110◦ N) and (111◦ N, 180◦ N)
for the peak direction of wave propagation (Figure 14A). These are preferentially driven by
Bora and Sirocco winds, respectively. We note that the incoming direction of northeasterly
waves is rotated clockwise relative to the forcing wind due to the wave refraction in
the relatively shallow environment close to the inlets. Sirocco wave directions, on the
contrary, are less affected by the interaction with the bottom since their incoming direction
is almost orthogonal to the coastline. The POT analysis for the period 1981–2010 led to
the identification of 246 storms (i.e., 8.2 per year on average) in the entire series, and 154
(5.1 per year) and 92 (3.1 per year) storms for Bora and Sirocco, respectively (red markers
in Figure 14B–D). Maximum values of Hs were found at 3.47 m for Bora seas and 4.30 m
for Sirocco seas. The return period TR of the largest value is about 30 years, according
to Weibull [90]. Furthermore, empirical POT data were fitted to a generalized Pareto
distribution (GPD; see, e.g., [91]), whose parameters were determined with a maximum
Water 2022, 14, 1590 20 of 26

likelihood estimator. Results from the GPD fitting are shown in Figure 14B–D for the
omnidirectional, Bora, and Sirocco storms, respectively. From the GPD fitting, the Hs values
at TR = 30 years are estimated at 3.30 m and 4.14 m for Bora and Sirocco, respectively.
As expected, the longest fetch available for Sirocco waves to develop impacts the more
energetic storms that may reach the area. The good agreement we found between model
and measured Hs at AA (a few kilometers offshore of the Malamocco inlet) gives confidence
in the reliability of these estimates.

Figure 14. The long-term wave climate offshore the Venice lagoon (the northern Adriatic Sea; see
Figure 1) for the present-day period 1981–2010. (A) Geographical position of the location of interest
(black dot at the center of the polar grid) and distribution (small black dots) of Hs (radius, discretized
every 1 m) and peak direction of propagation (angle, clockwise from the north). The long-term
distribution of the POT ranked Hs values and associated empirical return periods TR (red crosses) for
the overall sea states (B), Bora sea states (C), and Sirocco sea states (D). In the inset, the polar grid
replicates with black dots the grid on panel (A), while the red dots identify the storms used for the
extreme analysis of each dataset. The black line shows the generalized Pareto distribution (GPD)
values and their confidence interval (shaded gray area).

To assess what the wave conditions just offshore the Mo.S.E. barriers might be for the
projected future, the same extreme value analysis has been applied to the Hs results of the
RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 simulations. Figure 15 shows the comparison of the peak Hs at different
TR (2, 5, 10, and 30 years) between the present-day period (CTR, 1981–2010) and the two
scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 for the years 2021–2050. It appears that under both RCP4.5
and RCP8.5, sea states at all return periods will undergo a decrease of the wave energy,
which will be larger under RCP8.5 (about −9%) than under RCP4.5 (about −4%), and with
minor differences (within 1.5%, on average) between Bora and Sirocco. Changes seem to be
stochastically significant, with stronger evidence under RCP8.5. The similarity between the
two regimes is the integral result of the two factors that most influence the wave growth:
the wind speed (Bora speeds are generally stronger) and the fetch (for Sirocco, almost the
Water 2022, 14, 1590 21 of 26

whole Adriatic Sea is available). Especially for the southeasterly Sirocco sea states, the
cumulative effect along the Adriatic Sea SE-NW axis is at a maximum near the north coast.
On a slightly different subject, the same trend can be found in the analysis of Sirocco-driven
storm surge projections in the same area [29,35]. However, since additional factors such as
subsidence and sea level rise will impact the effectiveness of the Mo.S.E. barriers, a future
reduction of the wind-supported sea energy does not necessarily imply increased safety for
the coastal structures and the lagoon of Venice.

Figure 15. The long-term wave climate change offshore of the Venice lagoon (the northern Adriatic
Sea, Malamocco inlet) for the projected future years 2021–2050. Comparison between the values
of the significant wave height Hs at different return periods TR (2, 5, 10, and 30 years) from the
present-day simulation (CTR, 1981–2010) and the two scenarios RCP4.5 (A) and RCP8.5 (B). The
statistics are provided for omnidirectional (circles), Bora (pentagram) and Sirocco (squares) sea states.
The percentage values in the insets represent the average change for the future period. The dashed
black line indicates the perfect 1:1 match between datasets.

5. Concluding Remarks
The present study investigated the use of a statistical method to climate-correct the
sea surface wind speed from the ECMWF reanalysis ERA5. We relied on a quantile-
quantile matching method to correct the reanalysis winds in order to match the present-day
(1981–2010) and near-future (2021–2050) states of the climate system. The procedure is
applied over the Adriatic Sea and makes use of the fields provided by the high-resolution
(0.0715◦ in lon-lat) regional climate model COSMO-CLM with the configuration over Italy
developed by CMCC under two representative concentration pathways: a medium (RCP4.5)
and a high-emission scenario (RCP8.5). Therefore, this study used matching to achieve a
statistical correspondence between the reanalysis and the climate model data. To assess
the climatological fields of the significant wave height (a proxy of the total wave energy),
the climate-corrected ERA5c winds were used to drive spectral wave model simulations
at 0.025◦ of resolution over the present and future periods. No observation of wind and
waves was incorporated in the correction procedure, but the present-day simulations of
wind and waves were evaluated against measured data at three independent locations
along the basin to assess uncertainties. The main results of the study can be summarized
as follows.
The model-to-model quantile correction method proved to effectively adjust the ERA5
bias over the Adriatic Sea, still maintaining a high degree of physical consistency. The
correction was considered wind speed-dependent and geographically variable. The reanal-
ysis ERA5 has the advantage of reproducing at high-temporal resolution (1 h) the realistic
Water 2022, 14, 1590 22 of 26

sequence of the historical events. Both features are required to characterize the wind-wave
storm and climate properly. However, over the Adriatic Sea, the effect of the relatively
coarse, native spatial resolution of ERA5 fields was to smooth the sharp gradients of the
evolving wind field. The resulting bias could be then transmitted to the wave field. On the
other hand, the high-resolution CCLM-CMCC was particularly skilled in the reproduction
of wind magnitudes and directions of the dominant regimes. After matching, corrected
ERA5 data have proven helpful for the wind and wave models evaluation since, for the
historical period, a storm-based analysis against observations can be performed. Moreover,
constraining the sequence of storms in the present-day and future climate experiments has
advantages because the assessment of the regional climate responses is not affected by the
changes in internal variability. It is expected that the technique may be applied to other
reanalyses and basins with similar characteristics. The analysis may be further extended
by adopting, for the correction, multi-model ensembles of GCM-RCM to account for the
climate model uncertainties.
It is worth noting that the statistical correction of the reanalysis wind speed might
introduce undesired secondary effects on the resulting fields [92]. Known deficiencies of
bias correction methods, such as the inability to correct the storm track and timing, are
largely alleviated using reanalysis variables as input. For the historical period, additional
bias in the wind pattern can occur in those regions where the climate is at least bimodal
in direction, and the correction of ERA5 differs among regimes. The frame is further
complicated for regimes expected to undergo a different change in intensity and trend in
the future. For all those situations where they do not strictly apply (e.g., for simulations
covering the distant future or running over a large sea basin with weak or null orographic
constraint), an improved strategy should be adopted, for instance, using a direction-
dependent correction factor for ERA5. A possible method to correct the wind vector bias
(i.e., both directional components) can use a bivariate quantile adjustment as in [72]. We
note that this additional complexity might reduce the consistency of the corrected variables.
The proposed approach was implemented to simulate the wind-wave climate of the
Adriatic Sea. Although in the absence of an assessment of the uncertainty associated
with the choice of an individual climate model, our results show that for the near future
(2021–2050), there is evidence of a statistically robust and consistent reduction of storm
intensity and significant wave height (99th percentile) in the northern part of the Adriatic
Sea, where Bora dominates the climate, with a larger change (up to −10% of Hs ) under the
high-emission scenario RCP8.5 than under RCP4.5. This result is consistent with previous
climate studies and is compatible with an expected future shift of the winter cyclones
over the Mediterranean Sea, consolidating the established relationship between large-scale
changes induced by carbon dioxide increase and local effects. For the central and southern
regions of the Adriatic Sea, a pattern of uniform change is hardly visible (not significant),
albeit a spread decrease in the sea state severity has been found. For the milder wind
regimes, the change we have found is small and not statistically significant. When focusing
on the storms just in front of the Venice lagoon (where mobile barriers are protecting the
city from floods), we demonstrated that Hs values at 2-, 5-, 10-, and 30-year return periods
will undergo a decrease (−4% to −9%) in the future (2021–2050) under both RCP4.5 and
RCP8.5 scenarios. This result does not necessarily guarantee increased safety for the coastal
structure, as wave impacts must be combined with the local subsidence, sea level rise, and
storm surge. All these issues deserve further in-depth study.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization, A.B. and S.D.; Data curation, A.B., S.D., F.B. and P.M.
Formal analysis, A.B., S.D. and F.B.; Funding acquisition, A.B. and M.S.; Investigation, A.B., S.D. and
C.F.; Methodology, A.B., F.B., P.M. and C.F.; Software, S.D., F.B., P.M. and M.S.; Supervision, A.B.;
Validation, F.B.; Visualization, A.B., S.D. and C.F.; Writing–original draft, A.B. All authors have read
and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Water 2022, 14, 1590 23 of 26

Funding: Scientific activity performed in the Research Programme Venezia2021, coordinated by

CORILA, with the contribution of the Provveditorato for the Public Works of Veneto, Trentino Alto
Adige and Friuli Venezia Giulia. This work was also conducted as part of the bilateral project EOLO-1
between CNR-ISMAR and the University of Tokyo. This work was partially supported by the project
AdriaClim (Climate change information, monitoring and management tools for adaptation strategies
in Adriatic coastal areas; project ID 10252001) funded by the European Union under the V-A Interreg
Italy-Croatia CBC programme.
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made
available by the authors without undue reservation.
Acknowledgments: We are grateful to Luigi Cavaleri (CNR-ISMAR) for valuable discussions on
wave models, Piero Lionello (Università del Salento) and Davide Bonaldo (CNR-ISMAR) for insights
on the wave climate analysis, and Marianna Adinolfi for preparing and providing the data of the
regional climate model CCLM-CMCC. Piero Ruol and Luca Martinelli (University of Padua) helped
with the storm analysis.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare that the research was conducted without any commercial
or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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