Effects of climate change scenarios on the coastal flooding hazard induced by extreme wave conditions in the southern Italian coasts

In the era of climate change induced by global warming, it becomes fundamental to consider the long-term variation of physical parameters needed to define design loads or to perform risk assessment. In the scientific community, the IPCC provides an assessment report on climate change approaching a wide range of issues including the impact on the environment and potential mitigation and adaptation strategies, at a global level (Brasseur, 2022). In the coastal field, it is expected that climate change will influence wind patterns, sea levels, storm surge characteristics and their frequency. This will have an impact on wind-generated waves and on the variation of its synthetic parameters that will characterise coastal flooding phenomena in the near future, especially along low-lying coasts. In this context, climate change may induce modifications to wave intensity and direction so, this could have detrimental effects on coastal areas. Furthermore, it has been substantiated that the combination of rising sea levels, wave run-up and storm surge events will enhance the role of coastal flooding in the management of coastal areas and in the definition of long-term adaptation strategies (Pasquali et al., 2023; Pörtner et al., 2019). The quantitative estimation of impacts of climate change can be then identified as primary aspect to be dealt with the definition of adaptation strategies (von Schuckmann et al., 2023). The functionality of coastal and harbor infrastructures and the evolving threat of coastal flooding highlight the critical importance of investigating the potential impacts of climate change. Due to this, there is clearly a need for implementing enduring adaptation strategies, allowing to incorporate them into land-use policies and effective management practices (De Girolamo et al., 2017; Pasquali et al., 2023; van Gent, 2019).