Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences

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]

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]

Abrupt Warming could bring our planet a “Hothouse Earth” with catastrophic consequences for our economy and society

Davide Faranda September 9, 2019

Global map of potential tipping cascades. The individual tipping elements are color-coded according to estimated thresholds in global average surface temperature (Source: W. Steffen et al., Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115 (33), 8252-8259, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1810141115, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1810141115 . License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .

Most of us have enjoyed swings in childhood. Some have even tried to swing faster and make a full 360 degrees’ loop. Those who succeeded had a very strange feeling of not being able to predict whether, increasing the energy of the swing, the transition from normal oscillations and 360 loops would happen. Indeed, there is an energy threshold such that the swing goes from oscillations to full loops ...[Read More]