In the Mediterranean Basin, recent accelerated changes in the environment (climate, land use, pollution, biodiversity loss) have caused loss of life and damages to infrastructure and ecosystems. The future presents unprecedented risks for human well-being, socioeconomic development, ecosystems and biodiversity. Policies for sustainable development need to aim for the mitigation of these risks but lack adequate information about the rates of environmental change and the combined risk they present to human society. For five interconnected impact domains (water, ecosystems, food, health and security), trends and scenarios point to significant risks during coming decades. More observations and better impact models exist for the Northern Mediterranean shores than for the South. This important bias is exacerbated by the large difference in financial resources available for adaptation and the development of resilience between north and south. A dedicated effort to synthesize existing scientific knowledge from all relevant disciplines is now underway to provide better understanding of the risks posed. In the Mediterranean Basin, human society and the natural environment have co-evolved over several millennia with significant climatic variations, laying the ground for diverse and culturally rich communities. The region lies in a transition zone between mid-latitude and subtropical circulation regimes. It is characterized by a complex morphology of mountain chains and strong land-sea contrasts, dense and growing human population and various environmental pressures. Observed rates of climate change in the Mediterranean Basin exceed global trends for most variables. Annual mean temperatures are now 1.4 °C above late nineteenth century levels (Figure 1), notably during the summer months. Heat waves occur more frequently, and the frequency and intensity of droughts have increased since 1950. 1,2,3 For each of the most recent decades, the surface of the Mediterranean Sea has warmed by around 0.4 °C. 4 During the period 1945-2000, sea-level has risen at a rate of 0.7±0.2 mm yr-1 , 5 accelerating to 1.1 mm yr-1 for the period 1970-2006. 6 During the last two decades, sea-level has been estimated to rise by about 3 cm decade-1 , 7 in part due to

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Abstract. In Morocco, socio-economic activities are highly vulnerable to extreme weather events. This study investigates trends in mean and extreme rainfall, run-off and temperature, as well as their relationship with large-scale atmospheric circulation. It focuses on two Moroccan watersheds: the subhumid climate region of Bouregreg in the north and the semiarid region of Tensift in the south, using data from 1977 to 2003. The study is based on a set of daily temperature, precipitation and run-off time series retrieved from weather stations in the two regions. Results do not show a homogeneous behaviour in the two catchments; the influence of the largescale atmospheric circulation is different and a clear spatial dependence of the trend analysis linked to the distance from the coast and the mountains can be observed. Overall, temperature trends are mostly positive in the studied area, while weak statistically significant trends can be identified in seasonal rainfall, extreme rainfall events, average run-off and extreme run-off events.

Abstract. The Moroccan Mediterranean coast is located in one of the area's most vulnerable to extreme weather events or tsunami hazards. The objective of this research is to reconstruct the historical extreme submersion-event record using sea-induced deposits preserved in coastal lagoon. The Nador lagoon is the largest Moroccan lagoon (115 km 2 ). It is located along the western Mediterranean, which has a high cyclogenetic character and is exposed to tsunamis from the Alboran Sea. The sandy barrier which separates the lagoon from the Mediterranean Sea is marked by much overwash, which indicate how intensely it has been exposed to the adverse sea events through history. Using the UWITEC © gravity coring platform, an undisturbed MC4.5 core (1.15 m long) was successfully sampled in the studied lagoon. To identify extreme sea events, a multi-proxy approach was applied combining sedimentological and geochemical data. Three paleoevents were identified; all of them are concentrated over the last 500 years, and the most recent event corresponds to the 1889 storm. For the others deposits, it is difficult to determine exactly their origin; however, the high frequency of storm events over the relevant period and the absence of historical tsunamis evidence is more in favor of the meteorological origin.

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