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]

Why Bushfires raged out of control across Australia?

Davide Faranda January 22, 2020

A diagram showing how pyrocumulonimbus clouds are formed. Credits: Bureau of Meteorology, Victoria.

Australian wildfires have burned an impressively large surface and caused the death of at least 24 citizens as well as of numerous animals. This immense disaster raises questions about its linkage with climate change, the possibility of controlling these events and the future of Australian wildlife ecosystems. While the first question will be addressed by soon to come attribution studies, and the ...[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]