Detection and quantification of wave trends in the Mediterranean basin

A study of a 42-year (1979-2020) long wave time series was performed forthe Mediterranean Sea to detect and quantify trends in two relevant waveparameters adopted for coastal and offshore engineering purposes: significantwave height, Hs and peak period, Tp. The high resolution MeteOcean ReAnalysis database by the Department of Civil, Chemical and EnvironmentalEngineering (DICCA) was used. At yearly and seasonal scales, the trendsof the mean and maximum values were detected by the Mann-Kendall test,choosing a significance level equal to 90%. The slope or increase/decreasetrends in Hs and Tp were assessed by the Theil-Sen estimator. For themean values of Hs and Tp, increasing trends were detected for the Libyan,Levantine and Aegean seas, while for the maximum values this increasingtrend was observed in a large part of the Mediterranean Sea. Finally, forthe different marginal seas of the Mediterranean basin, a running trendanalysis was applied in order to quantify the effect of the time window inthe trend detection. The obtained results can be significant for flooding anderosion control strategies, ship and port operations, design and verification ofstructures, installations of Wave Energy Converters, in a hot spot for climatechange such as the Mediterranean basin.