Hydrodynamic modelling for framing climate change in the Adriatic Sea and its coastal regions

Climate change is widely acknowledged as a major threat for coastal and transitional systems. In the framework of the Interreg Italy-Croatia Programme, the CHANGEWECARE (Climate cHallenges on coastal and transitional changing arEas: Weaving a Cross-Adriatic Response) Project (January2019–June2021) tackles the climate change-related risks affecting coastal and transitional systems in the Adriatic Sea. Focusing on the implications on meteo-marine climate, hydrological regimes, salt intrusion, tourism, biodiversity and land use,the Project aims at the formulation of planning options for decision makers and coastal communities. In this contribution we present the workin progress and some results on the assessment of climate change impacts on the main physical drivers of coastal and metocean dynamics in the Adriatic Sea. To this aim, we focus on a set of numerical modelling efforts recently undertaken and aimed at the assessment of trend sand projections for wave climate, ocean thermohaline circulation and storm surge, and ultimately of their possible implications for coastal ecology and geomorphology.