The causes of recent hydrological droughts and their future evolution under a changing climate are still poorly understood. Banking on a 216-year river flow time series at the Po River outlet, we show that the 2022 hydrological drought is the worst event (30% lower than the second worst, with a six-century return period), part of an increasing trend in severe drought occurrence. The decline in summer river flows (−4.14 cubic meters per second per year), which is more relevant than the precipitation decline, is attributed to a combination of changes in the precipitation regime, resulting in a decline of snow fraction (−0.6% per year) and snowmelt (−0.18 millimeters per day per year), and to increasing evaporation rate (+0.013 cubic kilometers per year) and irrigated areas (100% increment from 1900). Our study presents a compelling case where the hydrological impact of climate change is exacerbated by local changes in hydrologic seasonality and water use.

The city of Venice and the surrounding lagoonal ecosystem are highly vulnerable to variations in relative sea level. In the past ∼150 years, this was characterized by an average rate of relative sea-level rise of about 2.5 mm/year resulting from the combined contributions of vertical land movement and sea-level rise. This literature review reassesses and synthesizes the progress achieved in quantification, understanding and prediction of the individual contributions to local relative sea level, with a focus on the most recent studies. Subsidence contributed to about half of the historical relative sea-level rise in Venice. The current best estimate of the average rate of sea-level rise during the observational period from 1872 to 2019 based on tide-gauge data after removal of subsidence effects is 1.23 ± 0.13 mm/year. A higher – but more uncertain – rate of sea-level rise is observed for more recent years. Between 1993 and 2019, an average change of about +2.76 ± 1.75 mm/year is estimated from tide-gauge data after removal of subsidence. Unfortunately, satellite altimetry does not provide reliable sea-level data within the Venice Lagoon. Local sea-level changes in Venice closely depend on sea-level variations in the Adriatic Sea, which in turn are linked to sea-level variations in the Mediterranean Sea. Water mass exchange through the Strait of Gibraltar and its drivers currently constitute a source of substantial uncertainty for estimating future deviations of the Mediterranean mean sea-level trend from the global-mean value. Regional atmospheric and oceanic processes will likely contribute significant interannual and interdecadal future variability in Venetian sea level with a magnitude comparable to that observed in the past. On the basis of regional projections of sea-level rise and an understanding of the local and regional processes affecting relative sea-level trends in Venice, the likely range of atmospherically corrected relative sea-level rise in Venice by 2100 ranges between 32 and 62 cm for the RCP2.6 scenario and between 58 and 110 cm for the RCP8.5 scenario, respectively. A plausible but unlikely high-end scenario linked to strong ice-sheet melting yields about 180 cm of relative sea-level rise in Venice by 2100. Projections of human-induced vertical land motions are currently not available, but historical evidence demonstrates that they have the potential to produce a significant contribution to the relative sea-level rise in Venice, exacerbating the hazard posed by climatically induced sea-level changes.

This paper provides initial results from a multi-model ensemble analysis based on the volc-pinatubo-full experiment performed within the Model Intercomparison Project on the climatic response to Volcanic forcing (VolMIP) as part of the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). The volc-pinatubo-full experiment is based on an ensemble of volcanic forcing-only climate simulations with the same volcanic aerosol dataset across the participating models (the 1991–1993 Pinatubo period from the CMIP6-GloSSAC dataset). The simulations are conducted within an idealized experimental design where initial states are sampled consistently across models from the CMIP6-piControl simulation providing unperturbed preindustrial background conditions. The multi-model ensemble includes output from an initial set of six participating Earth system models (CanESM5, GISS-E2.1-G, IPSL-CM6A-LR, MIROC-E2SL, MPI-ESM1.2-LR and UKESM1). The results show overall good agreement between the different models on the global and hemispheric scales concerning the surface climate responses, thus demonstrating the overall effectiveness of VolMIP's experimental design. However, small yet significant inter-model discrepancies are found in radiative fluxes, especially in the tropics, that preliminary analyses link with minor differences in forcing implementation; model physics, notably aerosol–radiation interactions; the simulation and sampling of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO); and, possibly, the simulation of climate feedbacks operating in the tropics. We discuss the volc-pinatubo-full protocol and highlight the advantages of volcanic forcing experiments defined within a carefully designed protocol with respect to emerging modelling approaches based on large ensemble transient simulations. We identify how the VolMIP strategy could be improved in future phases of the initiative to ensure a cleaner sampling protocol with greater focus on the evolving state of ENSO in the pre-eruption period.

Many sunspot number series exist suggesting different levels of solar activity during the past centuries. Their reliability can be assessed only by comparing them with alternative indirect proxies. We test different sunspot number series against the updated record of cosmogenic radionuclide ⁴⁴Ti measured in meteorites. Two bounding scenarios of solar activity changes have been considered: the HH-scenario (based on the series by Svalgaard and Schatten, 2016) in particular predicting moderate activity during the Maunder minimum; and the LL-scenario (based on the R_G series by Lockwood et al., 2014b) predicting moderate activity for the 18—19th centuries and the very low activity level for the Maunder minimum. For each scenario, the magnetic open solar flux, the heliospheric modulation potential and the expected production of ⁴⁴Ti were computed. The calculated production rates were compared with the corresponding measurements of ⁴⁴Ti activity in stony meteorites fallen since 1766. The analysis reveals that the LL-scenario is fully consistent with the measured ⁴⁴Ti data, in particular recovering the observed secular trend between the 17th century and the Modern grand maximum. On the contrary, the HH-scenario appears significantly inconsistent with the data, mostly due the moderate level of activity during the Maunder minimum. It is concluded that the HH-scenario sunspot number reconstruction significantly overestimates solar activity prior to the mid-18th century, especially during the Maunder minimum. The exact level of solar activity after 1750 cannot be distinguished with this method, since both H- and L- scenarios appear statistically consistent with the data.

The German Bight is a shallow area in the southeastern North Sea. Atmospheric forcing, particularly wind stress, plays an essential role in the sea circulation dynamics in the area as a source of momentum and consequent driver of the variability on seasonal to interannual timescales. Westerly and SouthWesterly winds constitute the mean state of this forcing over the North Sea due to the persistent pressure gradients between the Icelandic Low and the Azores High. Consequently, the transport in the North Sea is primarily cyclonic. Nevertheless, the presence of land influences wind stress in the coastal regions (in terms of both intensity and direction). Moreover, distant locations respond differently to the action of the atmospheric pressure centers. Therefore, studies characterizing wind statistics in specific regions are mandatory for understanding and numerically simulating the sea circulation patterns in such areas. We present a detailed analysis of wind patterns in the German Bight, specifically in the Marine Protected Areas and Helgoland Island, using ERA5 reanalysis atmospheric data. We define and catalog area‐specific “events” according to their typical duration and magnitude and analyze their seasonality and interannual variability. We investigate the most recurrent locations and intensities of the high‐ and low‐pressure dipoles causing specific wind patterns over the German Bight during the different periods of the year. We show how, besides Westerly and SouthWesterly winds, NorthWesterly flows are a recurrent pattern in the area; winds from the East are less frequent but can be extremely persistent over the same site in the spring.