NP
Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences

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

April 25, 2022
NPG Paper of the Month: “Inferring the instability of a dynamical system from the skill of data assimilation exercises”
Scatter plots of the largest Lyapunov exponent (left) and Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy (right) against the skill of DA measured as the RMSE of the analysis. The experiments are done with model configurations displaying fully developed chaos (main panels) and with weakly chaotic configurations (insets). In all cases a strong observational constraint is applied: we measure the entire state vector at each time step. The theoretical error upper bound are also displayed (red markers).

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]

When weather extremes meet climate change: how do scientists attribute single events to climate change?

February 25, 2022
When weather extremes meet climate change: how do scientists attribute single events to climate change?
Tropical Cyclone Batsirai landfalled in Madagascar on February 5-6 2022, causing extended floding, visible on February 10 (right) when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over. In this comparison of false-color imagery, which uses MODIS bands 7-2-1, areas flooded with sediment-laden water appear blue. The same area is shown on January 30, between recent storms (left panel). Credits: NASA Earth Observatory.

One of the main new points of the IPCC reports AR6 with respect to the previous ones is the increased confidence that global climate change induced by anthropogenic emissions is critically affecting the dynamics of weather extremes. For summer, and specifically over Europe, the AR6 report states that we are already observing prolonged periods of extremely warm conditions with increased droughts bo ...[Read More]

From the eyes of tropical cyclones to flooded strands : how climatologists use weather events to make climate predictions?

October 26, 2021
From the eyes of tropical cyclones to flooded strands : how climatologists use weather events to make climate predictions?
Hurricane Florence seen from space: Credits: ESA/A.Gerst, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

While extreme events are meteorological in nature, climatologists collect them to draw conclusions about the state of the present climate and to get clues how they possibly change in the future. Thus, climate and weather find common ground. If we consider an event alone, we are not studying the climate, we are in the field of meteorology, the goal of climatologists is therefore to put extreme even ...[Read More]

The 2021 Nobel Prize on Physics awarded to the physics of complex systems!

October 25, 2021
The 2021 Nobel Prize on Physics awarded to the physics of complex systems!
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021. Credits: https://www.nobelprize.org.

On October 7th, the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 was announced. It came as a stunning surprise for the Non-linear Processes and Climate communities, the recipients of this year’s award being two outstanding senior climate scientists, Klaus Hasselmann and Syukuro Manabe, and a theoretical physicist specialized in complex systems, Giorgio Parisi. For many, this award was welcomed as a long-awaited re ...[Read More]