A review of potential physical impacts on harbours in the Mediterranean Sea under climate change

Abstract

The potential impact of climate change on port operations and infrastructures has received much less attention than the corresponding impact for beach systems. However, ports have always been vulnerable to weather extremes and climate change could enhance such occurrences at timescales comparable to the design lifetime of harbour engineering structures. The analysis in this paper starts with the main climatic variables affecting harbour engineering and exploitation. It continues with a review of the available projections for such variables first at global scale and then at a regional scale (Catalan coast in the western Mediterranean) as a study case for similar environments in the planet. The detailed assessment of impacts starts from downscaled projections for mean sea level and wave storms (wind not considered in the paper). This is followed by an analysis of the port operations and infrastructure performance that are relevant from a climate perspective. The key climatic factors here considered are relative sea level, wave storm features (height, period, direction and duration) and their combined effect, which is expected to produce the highest impacts. The paper ends with a discussion and some examples of analyses aiming at port adaptation to future climate change.

Climate change and interconnected risks to sustainable development in the Mediterranean

“…107 Sea level rise, which may well exceed recent IPCC estimates and reach more than 1 m in 2100 19 , will have considerable impact. High risk for wave overtopping in Northern Mediterranean ports is manifest, 108,109 however such coastal risks may be even higher along the Southern and Eastern shores, where adaptive capacity is generally limited by weaker economic and institutional conditions. Mediterranean port cities with more than million inhabitants each are considered at increasing risk from severe storm-surge flooding, rising sea and local land subsidence.…”

Implementation of Nature-Based Solutions for Hydro-Meteorological Risk Reduction in Small Mediterranean Catchments: The Case of Portofino Natural Regional Park, Italy

“…This relevance does not only apply to the elements that need to be protected (e.g., areas of high natural value, areas with cultural heritage sites), which also applies to the morphological conditions of the basins (e.g., areas with steep slopes, areas with similar lithological and structural conditions) and geo-hydrological hazards driven by hydro-meteorological events that are difficult to predict at the local scale. Further to this, the foreseen effects of climate change on weather extremes in the Mediterranean should be considered, including a variation in sea storms, variability of storm surge extremes, severe rainfalls, and prolonged desiccation events [54][55][56][57][58][59]. In particular, special attention should be given to the analysis of high-intensity rainfall events, which have caused many flash floods, landslides, and debris and hyper-concentrated flows in the Liguria region (see Figures 3 and 5f,g).…”

Addressing Long-Term Operational Risk Management in Port Docks under Climate Change Scenarios—A Spanish Case Study

“…The first step in the evaluation of operational vulnerability in port docks under climate change scenarios is to identify potential impacts, main metocean agents involved and sources of information (Sánchez-Arcilla et al, 2016 [23]). Studies addressing the impact of climate change on ports operability are few in comparison with the ones focused on coastal areas.…”