NP
Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences
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Tommaso Alberti

I am a researcher at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) in Rome, Italy. My research has an inter-disciplinary character and it mainly focuses on the understanding of processes occurring in geosciences, space sciences, and complex systems at different spatio-temporal scales. My investigations revolve around several key areas as weather and climate extremes with impacts on aviation turbulence, airports closures due to the adverse weather conditions, Acqua Alta events in Venice, flooding events after huge storms; turbulence and dissipation in both fluids and plasmas; and tipping points to develop statistical methods for identifying transition thresholds in complex systems at bifurcation points at different spatio-temporal scales with application to climate and paleoclimate, turbulence, and epidemiology.

#vEGU21 Networking events of the Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences (NP) Division

April 16, 2021
#vEGU21 Networking events of the Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences (NP) Division

The current COVID-19 situation has profoundly changed our daily lives and has also affected our way to perform and share research. In today’s world a lot of efforts have been made to minimize the impact of working from home and exchange thoughts with colleagues. As for last year the usual annual General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) has been moved online. Thus, it will be virtua ...[Read More]

NPG Paper of the Month: “A methodology to obtain model-error covariances due to the discretization scheme from the parametric Kalman filter perspective”

March 11, 2021
NPG Paper of the Month: “A methodology to obtain model-error covariances due to the discretization scheme from the parametric Kalman filter perspective”
Illustration of the transport of a chemical specy by a heterogeneous wind field over a 1D domain (a) and the numerical simulation from a simple discretization scheme (b). The loss of variance due to the spurious numerical diffusion involves an increase of the model-error variance (c) which is coupled with the anisotropy (the correlation length-scale in 1D domain, in panel d).

The January 2021 NPG Paper of the Month award goes to Olivier Pannekoucke and his co-authors for the paper “A methodology to obtain model-error covariances due to the discretization scheme from the parametric Kalman filter perspective“. In geophysics, forecasting is based on solving the equations of physics with the help of a computer. To calculate a forecast we need an initial conditi ...[Read More]

The most-read NPG 2020 paper: “Effects of upwelling duration and phytoplankton growth regime on dissolved-oxygen levels in an idealized Iberian Peninsula upwelling system”

January 29, 2021
The most-read NPG 2020 paper: “Effects of upwelling duration and phytoplankton growth regime on dissolved-oxygen levels in an idealized Iberian Peninsula upwelling system”
(a) Snapshot of dissolved oxygen distribution in the upwelling front instabilities for the ECS simulation (γ is the Okubo-Weiss criterion). (b) Dissolved Oxygen budget in the idealized Iberian Peninsula Upwelling System. Net value is the sum of Physical, Biological and Atmospheric processes that change oxygen concentration levels. Physics accounts for the effect of upwelled subsurface waters and offshore transport by upwelling front instabilities. Biology term accounts for oxygen photosynthetic production and community respiration. Simulations performed are ECS (short upwelling season with enhanced phytoplankton growth), ECC (long upwelling season with enhanced phytoplankton growth), NCC (long upwelling season with neutral phytoplankton growth) and LCC (long upwelling season with limited phytoplankton growth). License: Effects of upwelling duration and phytoplankton growth regime on dissolved-oxygen levels in an idealized Iberian Peninsula upwelling system.

An emerging problem brought by climate change is the on-going deoxygenation of the world’s oceans. The fact that concentrations of dissolved oxygen have been/are declining in both open-ocean and coastal waters is becoming a major scientific and societal concern raised in the Kiel Declaration and in the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) 2019 report. Lower levels of dissolved oxy ...[Read More]

NP Campfire: “Perspectives on Climate Science: from historical developments to research frontiers”

January 19, 2021
NP Campfire: “Perspectives on Climate Science: from historical developments to research frontiers”

Recently, the European Geosciences Union (EGU) started to support a new type of event called ‘Campfires’ that will give the Divisions the freedom to run online interactive events in a way that suits their needs. This allows the EGU Divisions to encourage interactions in their research communities through virtual informal meetings. In this framework, and thanks to a group of young and established s ...[Read More]