Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences

Is climate change making the weather more extreme?

Davide Faranda September 11, 2020

NOAA PSL weather forecasts of temperature anomaly at 850hPa (~1500m.a.s.l.) shows a deep negative anomaly on Central US, leading to snowfalls. Credits: NOAA.

Denver, Sept. 06: it is midday and Jonathan and Maria are sunbathing at City Park. They feel uncomfortable as the temperature has already reached 36°C. While they decide to go back home, their favoured weather app displays an unbelievable snowstorm watch for Tuesday Sept. 08. The forecast turns out to be rather accurate as all Colorado experiences one of the earliest snowstorms on record in Septem ...[Read More]

The 2020 extra-tropical monster cyclones and their (possible) relations with climate change

Davide Faranda February 18, 2020

The satellite image shows storm Uta (name chosen by the Freie University in Berlin) an incredibly large vortex spiraling close to Iceland.

On February 9th, a British Airways Boeing 747 landed in London Heathrow airport just four hours and 56 minutes after its take-off in JFK, New York, setting the shortest flight-time for non-supersonic jets over this route. The jumbo jet took advantage of the fast upper-tropospheric winds associated with an exceptionally strong jet-stream which created tail winds of about 400km/h. Over the United Ki ...[Read More]

Medicanes, thunderstorms and Acqua Alta in Venice: what is the role of climate change?

Davide Faranda November 27, 2019

The image shows a schematic representation of the extreme events associated to the medicane Detlef/Bernardo. The basic images is the infrared image from the EUMETSAT satellite network.

A Mediterranean cyclone, high tides and climate change: these three ingredients made the 12/11/2019 acqua alta event in Venice exceptional. This combination of causes determined what climate scientists define as a compound extreme event, a non-linear mix of factors which led to several and connected extreme weather phenomena in the Mediterranean area. Let us start by the analysis of the atmospheri ...[Read More]

After Lorenzo and Ophelia, should we prepare European coasts for tropical storms and hurricanes?

Davide Faranda October 15, 2019

probability forecasts of tropical storm force winds issued by the National Hurrican Center issued on 02/10/2019. Source: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at3.shtml?tswind120? .

Autumn is hurricane season in the north tropics and indeed 2019 does not make exception from this point of view. After Dorian hitting Bahamas and North Carolina, the American National Hurricane Center named Lorenzo a tropical depression originating near Capo Verde. On September 25th Lorenzo became a category 1 hurricane, according to the Saffir-Simpson scale. This scale categorizes the hurricanes ...[Read More]