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Spain is one of the leading tourist destinations worldwide, but also a climate change hot-spot. Weather conditions throughout the year have enabled the implementation of alternative outdoor leisure activities to beach-based tourism, helping to alleviate the strong seasonality. Climate is currently a positive resource but it could become a limiting factor for these activities in the future. Here, we assess the present and future conditions by adopting the second generation climate index for tourism (CIT) to quantify the climate potentials for cultural, golf, sailing, hiking, cycling and football activities. Present and future potentials are derived using observed and projected daily meteorological data from the ERA-5 reanalysis and the DMI-HIRHAM5 regional climate model (RCM) included in EURO-CORDEX project, respectively. A quantile–quantile adjustment is applied to the projected CIT data to correct biases at the local scale. Present climate potentials confirm the optimal conditions of the Spanish Mediterranean coast for practicing all the activities in spring and autumn, while in summer, ideal conditions only prevail for sailing. Projections show a general future increase of excellent climate potentials in winter and a general improvement of the weather assets in the northern half of the country during the shoulder seasons, except for cycling and football. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medicanes, for Mediterranean hurricanes, are mesoscale cyclones with morphological and physical characteristics similar to tropical cyclones. Although less intense, smaller, and rarer than their Atlantic counterparts, medicanes are very hazardous events threatening islands and continental coasts within the Mediterranean Sea. The latest strong episode, Medicane Ianos (September 2020), resulted in severe damages in Greece and several casualties. This work investigates the oceanic response to these extreme events along the Mediterranean coasts under present‐day and future (late 21st century) climate conditions. To this end, a coupled hydrodynamic‐wave model is used to simulate both storm surges and wind‐waves generation and propagation in the Mediterranean Sea at high resolution (∼2 km) along the coastlines. A data set of thousands of medicanes synthetically generated from 20 global climate models and two atmospheric reanalyses is used to derive the atmospheric forcing fields. Regional coastal hazards assessment is performed for the present and future climates. For the first period, highest medicane‐induced waves are found in the central and the southwest part of the western Mediterranean, while greatest storm surges are found in the Adriatic Sea and regions characterized by wide and gently sloping continental shelves. Results obtained for future changes show amplitudes generally smaller than the associated uncertainty due to limited agreement among models (especially for coastal elevation). Though, model consensus is reached (60–75%) and relative intensity change is significant (10–20%) at some locations (e.g., 1 m increase of medicane‐induced significant wave height on average for south coasts of Sicilia). Plain Language Summary: Mediterranean hurricanes, medicanes, are tropical‐like cyclones generated in the Mediterranean basin that differ from their counterpart in the Atlantic in their smaller size and intensity. They rarely exceed 400 km of diameter and last generally 24–48 hr, unusually reaching intensities of category 1 hurricanes. A medicane is characterized by a warm core accompanied by thunderstorms, heavy rain, but also strong cyclonic winds (counter‐clockwise rotation) that are responsible for costly damages and often result in casualties. Furthermore, medicanes pose serious threats to coastal populations due to the storm surges, that is, the raising of the sea surface due to low atmospheric pressure, and to the combined effects of waves and winds along the coasts. This study investigates the coastal hazards induced by medicanes over the entire basin. To do so, we used a hydrodynamic and wave coupled model to simulate the generation and propagation of storm surges and wind‐waves over the Mediterranean Sea under the forcing of a set of thousands of synthetic medicanes that statistically describe the medicane climate for the present and future period (end of 21st century). Our results identify the most exposed coastal areas and quantify the current and projected return levels for waves and storm surges. Key Points: Mediterranean hurricanes (medicanes) generate largest wind‐waves (exceeding 10 m) in the central and the southwest part of the western basinWide and gently sloping continental shelves favor the generation of storm surges under medicane forcing with 100‐year return levels over 1 mProjected changes medicane‐induced coastal hazards are uncertain due to limited multimodel consensus, with some local exceptions [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]