, 2010 and Wang et al., 2012, we develop a new approach taking into account the physical theory of directional and frequency decomposition of swell waves (e.g. Holthuijsen, 2007). The new model is then applied to 5 sets of projections of the atmosphere by four different RCMs (forced by one or two GCMs; see Table 1), to explore the inter-model variability and to project future changes in wave climate, as done by Casas-Prat and Sierra (2013) with dynamical downscaling. The study area is situated in the NW

Mediterranean DAPT manufacturer Sea, focusing on the Catalan coast (highlighted in red in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2). The new method is therefore adapted to the features of this zone, providing the area with a range of wave projections that are of sufficiently high spatial and temporal resolutions for coastal impact assessments in the context of climate change. In general, we aim to develop a computationally inexpensive method of general applicability. Thus, our method can easily be adapted for use in other regions. The remainder of this paper is structured buy PD0325901 as follows. Section 2 describes the main features of the atmospheric and wave climate of the study area, and Section 3, the datasets used to calibrate and validate the statistical model and to project the future wave climate

conditions in this area. Section 4 describes how the statistical method is developed and applied to the study area. Along with some discussion, Section 5 presents the results of model evaluation, and future wave projections are discussed in Section 6. Finally, Section 7 summarizes the main conclusions of this study, along with some discussion. Although Rutecarpine we focus on the wave climate along the Catalan coast, in order to account for swell waves (see Section 2.2), a larger domain (than merely the Catalan sea area) is considered as the “study area”, which is illustrated with a black square in Fig. 1 and shown enlarged

in Fig. 2. In determining the boundaries of this study area, we consider: (1) the maximum fetch affecting the Catalan coast and (2) the shadow effects produced by the Balearic islands (more details in Section 2.2). We will produce therefore wave climate projections for the whole study area (not only for the Catalan coast). However, the results are less reliable/accurate for grid points near the domain boundaries, especially those that are close to the Gibraltar strait, since no exchange with the Atlantic Ocean is considered in the datasets used. Having a better knowledge of the main aspects of atmospheric and (corresponding) wave climate is important to better design the statistical model, and to properly interpret the modeling results. Therefore, a review of those aspects has been undertaken and is presented in the subsections below. Several reviews and studies have been carried out in the recent years in order to better describe the characteristics of the complex Mediterranean climate (e.g. Bolle, 2003, Campins et al., 2011, Lionello et al.