Variability and future decreases in winter wave heights in the Western North Pacific

Ocean surface wave climate is a key consideration for a number of industrial and environmental systems, both offshore and at the coast. A dynamical spectral wave model forced with global climate models (GCMs) was used to produce an ensemble of simulations of both historical and projected future wave climate. To estimate the uncertainty of the projected wave climate, we combined a multimember ensemble experiment using MRI‐AGCM3.2H with a multimodel ensemble using eight CMIP5 GCMs. Future changes in wintertime wave heights from the end of the 20th to the 21st century were analyzed. Projected decreases in wave heights over the Western North Pacific are highly consistent among the ensemble. The future decreases in wave heights are significantly related to changes in the West Pacific pattern. Both locally generated waves and remotely generated swells are important to estimate future changes in the wave climate on a regional scale.