The first days of October were marked by an extreme weather event: storm Alex, a cyclone of Atlantic origin, caused massive showers and thunderstorms over Provence, the Alps, Piedmont and Liguria. In these regions, numerous historical records of precipitation were broken causing the flooding of several streams and rivers in which many people lost their lives. Economic damage was also significant a ...[Read More]
Perspectives on Climate Science: from historical developments to research frontiers
Breaking news: a bizarre early-September snowstorm dumped snow from Montana to New Mexico, a medicane hit Southern Italian regions and Greece, heatwaves and droughts are expected to increase in the future… These extreme events are becoming more and more frequent and one question spontaneously arises: is climate change making the weather more extreme? This is one of the reasons why climate change i ...[Read More]
NPG Paper of the Month “Anthropocene climate bifurcation”
Arctic surface temperature change projected to year 2300 (relative to year 2000 mean temperature of -28.90 °C), with linearly increasing ocean heat
transport F_O . (a) With constant F_A = 104 W/m2, there is a jump in temperature for
RCP 8.5 but not for the other choices of RCP. (b) The same as (a) except that
in addition to increasing F_O , the atmosphere heat transport F_A also increases linearly from 104 to 129 W/m2 . Now upward transitions occur on both RCP
8.5 and 6.0, as indicated by the arrows.
License: https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-27-391-2020.
The July 2020 NPG Paper of the Month award goes to Kolja Kypke, William Langford and Allan Willms, for their paper “Anthropocene climate bifurcation” (https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-27-391-2020). All three authors work at the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. William Langford did his PhD at the California Institute of Technology in 1971 under the supervision of Herbert Kel ...[Read More]
Is climate change making the weather more extreme?
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]