The overall objective of STOWASUS-2100 is to study severe storms, surges and waves in the present climate and in a CO₂-scenario climate.

STOWASUS-2100 deals with storminess on a variety of spatial scales. On the larger scales, studies on storminess in the North Atlantic region will be performed. Detailed studies on storminess, surges and waves will be carried out in the Adriatic, The North Sea and the Norwegian Sea. On the local scales, storms and surges will be studied in estuaries, low lying coastal areas along the North Mediterranean and North-western European coasts. 

 To achieve these goals dynamical and statistical downscaling techniques will be applied to a state-of-the-art transient CO₂-pertubed climate simulation. Results will be carefully analysed with emphasis on extreme events and will to the greatest possible extent be validated against observational records. Also the influence on storm development of the expected increased water vapour content in a CO₂-pertubed atmosphere will be studied.

STOWASUS-2100 will improve our ability to assess certain impacts of changes in extreme climate statistics for important European economic sectors, such as off-shore, fishery and navigation. STOWASUS-2100 will also contribute to understand the causes for and give better possibility for preventing coastal erosion along European coasts. Finally, it will help quantifying the influence of human activity in the past climate record, thus helping a detection of human-induced climate change.