extreme weather events

Four reasons for still observing cold spells despite the undeniable global climate change

Davide Faranda February 18, 2021

Stravinsky fountain, near the Centre Pompidou (Paris) frozen by the cold wave of 2021.

The winter of 2020-2021 has been characterized by various cold waves affecting – at different times – Western and Eastern Europe and North America. The most striking pictures show Madrid covered by up to 40 cm of fresh snow, frozen Thames near London and Canal St Martin in Paris, heavy snow in Amsterdam and even on the Eolian Islands, just offshore Sicily. At first this seems contradi ...[Read More]

NPG Paper of the Month: “Statistical postprocessing of ensemble forecasts for  severe weather at Deutscher Wetterdienst”

Tommaso Alberti December 23, 2020

Probabilities of wind gusts higher than 14 m/s on a regular 1 km grid over Germany; 13 h forecast lied time from Ensemble-MOS for COSMO-DE-EPS from 29 October 2018. Licence: Statistical postprocessing of ensemble forecasts for severe weather at Deutscher Wetterdienst.

The October 2020 NPG Paper of the Month award goes to Reinhold Hess for the paper “Statistical postprocessing of ensemble forecasts for  severe weather at Deutscher Wetterdienst“. Ensemble Forecasting rose with the understanding of the limited predictability of weather. In a perfect ensemble system, the obtained ensemble of forecasts expresses the distribution of possible weather scena ...[Read More]

The never-ending 2020 hurricane season

Davide Faranda November 23, 2020

Hurricane Iota approaching central America: satellite picture. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Iota, this is the name of the last category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. Iota is a non-name because normally hurricanes are named by NOAA starting from A to Z but when the alphabet is over, they are just identified from a letter of the Greek alphabet. Iota is a special cyclone not just because its name implies that the hurricane season is particularly rich in storms but also because of its e ...[Read More]

A new European effort to better understand extreme weather

Gabriele Messori November 12, 2020

Feature Image: Screenshot of the european weather Extremes: DrIvers, Predictability and Impacts (EDIPI) homepage. Background Image Credits: Copernicus Sentinel data, processed by ESA.

Extreme weather events routinely have detrimental socio-economic impacts around the globe. In fact, weather-related events make up over 90% of natural disasters worldwide [1]. In the new millennium, the frequency of many extreme weather events such as droughts and high temperatures, has systematically exceeded the levels seen in the 1980s and 1990s [1], and anthropogenic climate change may further ...[Read More]