Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences

Can Artificial Intelligence replace scientists to explain Climate Change? Find it out in our first interview to… ChatGPT!

Davide Faranda January 3, 2023

Figure: DallE (the visual cousin of ChatGPT) has produced this image when I asked for “a cartoon showing a climatologist with research articles walking on a weather map” As a communication officer of the division of Nonlinear Processes I started to write posts for the EGU blog a few years ago and I found it a very difficult task: one has to find the right scientific sources about arguments ...[Read More]

The Great Cold Debate: Is Climate Change to Blame for Extreme Cold Spells?

Davide Faranda December 27, 2022

In December 2022, the United States experienced a severe cold spell, with record-low temperatures being recorded in many parts of the country. While it is natural for cold spells to occur, the question has arisen as to whether climate change is playing a role in the intensity and frequency of these events. There is ongoing debate among scientists about the relationship between climate change and ...[Read More]

NP Interview: Federico Grazzini on Climate Change casts shadows on the present and the future of the Mediterranean Basin

Davide Faranda November 17, 2022

Weather extreme events in the year 2022 are really hitting the Mediterranean basin very hard. Since the beginning of the year we are observing a widespread drought, heatwaves but also severe thunderstorms. Few days before the COP meeting in Sharm-el-sheik we discussed one of the experts of Mediterranean climate, Federico Grazzini, to unveil whether these events can be linked to climate change. Fe ...[Read More]

How climate change can possibly increase the intensity of tornadoes in Europe

Davide Faranda October 26, 2022

On October 23 2022, a tornado outbreak occurred in France, causing extensive damages. Tornadoes in France are a relatively rare phenomenon, even more so in the second half of October. This weather phenomenon is linked to intense thunderstorms, and it is difficult to predict because it is very localized. Will global warming make this weather more frequent or intense? A thundercloud that grows visib ...[Read More]

What the 2022 summer thunderstorms in the Mediterranean tell us about the ongoing climate change?

Davide Faranda September 7, 2022

The 2022 European summer was governed by the presence of a persistent cold drop (low pressure area) located between Portugal and France. The change in its position has determined the alternation between hot conditions (low pressure center over Portugal) and stormy conditions (cold drop over France). The warming of the Mediterranean Sea (up to +6°C compared to the period 1990-2020) has largely cont ...[Read More]

NP Interviews: Davide Faranda (CNRS) on the topic “global warming and extreme events in Europe”

Tommaso Alberti and Davide Faranda August 30, 2022

Davide Faranda is a physicist at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). His main interests are devoted to the construction of a statistical mechanical and dynamical systems framework for the study of atmospheric motions. In particular, his works aim at the characterization of the metastable states of the atmospheric circulation with simple mathematical and statistical tools, an ...[Read More]

A new virtual seminar series on Climate Physics organized by the American Physical Society (APS) group in Physics of Climate

Tommaso Alberti June 23, 2022

The APS Topical Group on the Physics of Climate (APS-GPC) is excited to launch a new virtual monthly seminar series on climate physics and variability. These seminars are aimed at introducing the broader physics community (and math, engineering, and other communities) to the fundamentals of climate science as well as cutting-edge research and open questions in this field. APS invites you to attend ...[Read More]

A few reasons making the June 2022 French Heatwave too hot & too soon

Davide Faranda June 17, 2022

Too hot, Too soon: the thermometer has reached unprecedented temperature for a month of June in France, with the 40°C mark crossed by Friday June 17 in part of France. The IPCC AR6 report now clearly states that the probability of heatwave events such as this one has increased by a factor 3 to 5 in the present climate with respect to a counterfactual world not affected by anthropogenic greenhouse ...[Read More]

ClimarisQ: A game on the complexity of the climate systems and the extreme events

Davide Faranda May 26, 2022

ClimarisQ is a smartphone/web game from a scientific mediation project that highlights the complexity of the climate system and the urgency of collective action to limit climate change. It is available in four languages: English, French, Spanish and Italian. It is an app-game where players must make decisions to limit the frequency and impacts of extreme climate events and their impacts on human s ...[Read More]

NPG Paper of the Month: “Inferring the instability of a dynamical system from the skill of data assimilation exercises”

Yumeng Chen April 25, 2022

The NPG paper of the month was awarded to “Inferring the instability of a dynamical system from the skill of data assimilation exercises” by Yumeng Chen, Alberto Carrassi, and Valerio Lucarini. Geophysical systems are usually described by a set of dynamical equations that are often non-linear and chaotic (Ghil and Lucarini, 2020). Errors about the initial state can grow, shrink, or sta ...[Read More]