Simulation of the future warming over the Egyptian Mediterranean coast

Over the past few decades, increasing frequencies and intensities of extreme weather events have been noted worldwide, which are a result of climate change. There is an increasing need to understand surface air temperature variabilities, as these are required to devise adaptation and mitigation plans for the Egyptian Mediterranean coast (EMC). The current paper sheds light on current and future trends in the surface air temperature (T2m) by using modeling techniques (the regional climate model RegCM-SVN). Various atmospheric parameters-air temperature, geopotential height, relative humidity, and zonal/meridional wind components-are used to drive the RegCM-SVN model for dynamical downscaling simulation of the period from 2006 to 2060 under the RCP2.6 (2.6 W/m(2)) and RCP8.5 (> 8.5 W/m(2)) scenarios. The results showed that the RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 scenarios over the EMC lead to significant warming, ranging from + 0.35 to + 0.38 degree celsius, suggesting a significant acceleration of T2m warming trends over the next decades. The RegCM-SVN model and ERA5 (the fifth-generation ECMWF reanalysis for the global climate and weather data) give rather similar results when simulating T2m and show a strong correlation of greater than 90% over the oceanic area and greater than 0.85% over the land area (the Sinai Peninsula and the Gulf of Aqaba) for the controlled period (2006-2020). The validation processes indicated that the RegCM-SVN model successfully simulated the increasing surface air temperature over the EMC, which is considered a major challenge posed by climate change. This challenge is expected to have a series of negative effects across all the sectors of human activities in Egypt (the tourism, agriculture, health, and marine sectors). Thus, understanding the dynamics of T2m over Egypt is a critical issue in coping with climate change. In the same context, determining the long-term variability of surface air temperature is essential for devising adaptation and mitigation plans over such hotspot marine areas.