The Mediterranean region has been identified as one of the main climate change hotspots: that is, one of the most responsive areas to climate change. The area is populated by over 500 million people, distributed in about 30 countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Therefore, understanding climate variability here has also important social implications.
A new study by SERC and ANS Division recently published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society  illustrate an innovative multimodel system developed within the Climate Change and Impact Research: The Mediterranean Environment (CIRCE) European Union (EU) Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) project and used to produce simulations of the Mediterranean Sea regional climate.

The abstract of the paper:
In this article, the authors describe an innovative multimodel system developed within the Climate Change and Impact Research: The Mediterranean Environment (CIRCE) European Union (EU) Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) project and used to produce simulations of the Mediterranean Sea regional climate. The models include high-resolution Mediterranean Sea components, which allow assessment of the role of the basin and in particular of the air–sea feedbacks in the climate of the region.
The models have been integrated from 1951 to 2050, using observed radiative forcings during the first half of the simulation period and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A1B scenario during the second half.
The projections show a substantial warming (about 1.5°–2°C) and a significant decrease of precipitation (about 5%) in the region for the scenario period. However, locally the changes might be even larger. In the same period, the projected surface net heat loss decreases, leading to a weaker cooling of the Mediterranean Sea by the atmosphere, whereas the water budget appears to increase, leading the basin to lose more water through its surface than in the past. Overall, these results are consistent with the findings of previous scenario simulations, such as the Prediction of Regional Scenarios and Uncertainties for Defining European Climate Change Risks and Effects (PRUDENCE), Ensemble-Based Predictions of Climate Changes and Their Impacts (ENSEMBLES), and phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3). The agreement suggests that these findings are robust to substantial changes in the configuration of the models used to make the simulations.
Finally, the models produce a 2021–50 mean steric sea level rise that ranges between +7 and +12 cm, with respect to the period of reference.

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Photo by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center at Flickr.com