- Morim, Joao;
- Hemer, Mark;
- Wang, Xiaolan L;
- Cartwright, Nick;
- Trenham, Claire;
- Semedo, Alvaro;
- Young, Ian;
- Bricheno, Lucy;
- Camus, Paula;
- Casas-Prat, Mercè;
- Erikson, Li;
- Mentaschi, Lorenzo;
- Mori, Nobuhito;
- Shimura, Tomoya;
- Timmermans, Ben;
- Aarnes, Ole;
- Breivik, Øyvind;
- Behrens, Arno;
- Dobrynin, Mikhail;
- Menendez, Melisa;
- Staneva, Joanna;
- Wehner, Michael;
- Wolf, Judith;
- Kamranzad, Bahareh;
- Webb, Adrean;
- Stopa, Justin;
- Andutta, Fernando
Understanding climate-driven impacts on the multivariate global wind-wave climate is paramount to effective offshore/coastal climate adaptation planning. However, the use of single-method ensembles and variations arising from different methodologies has resulted in unquantified uncertainty amongst existing global wave climate projections. Here, assessing the first coherent, community-driven, multi-method ensemble of global wave climate projections, we demonstrate widespread ocean regions with robust changes in annual mean significant wave height and mean wave period of 5–15% and shifts in mean wave direction of 5–15°, under a high-emission scenario. Approximately 50% of the world’s coastline is at risk from wave climate change, with ~40% revealing robust changes in at least two variables. Furthermore, we find that uncertainty in current projections is dominated by climate model-driven uncertainty, and that single-method modelling studies are unable to capture up to ~50% of the total associated uncertainty.