NP
Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences

Heatwaves

ECS Spotlight: Evolution of the Dynamics of Centennial Hot Summers in Western Europe With Climate Change

December 1, 2025
ECS Spotlight: Evolution of the Dynamics of Centennial Hot Summers in Western Europe With Climate Change

Extreme meteorological and climatological events can be immensely damaging and disruptive to society. Understanding the physical mechanisms driving these events, and how they will evolve with climate change is crucial for informing societal adaptation to our changing climate. However, extreme events are, by definition, rare. Our capacity to understand these events is, therefore, hindered by the sm ...[Read More]

ECS SpotLight: The link between European warm-temperature extremes and atmospheric persistence

September 11, 2023
ECS SpotLight: The link between European warm-temperature extremes and atmospheric persistence

Persistent atmospheric circulation patterns are not a necessary requirement for warm temperature extremes in Europe. This key finding from a recent study led by Emma Holmberg challenges a more traditional meteorological view of persistence, which typically considers summertime heatwaves, especially in northern regions of Europe, to be synonymous with persistent atmospheric flow patterns. Furthermo ...[Read More]

Socio-economic and security implications of global heating

May 15, 2023
Socio-economic and security implications of global heating

This year, like in the last few years, we are experiencing the effects of global heating in increasingly personal ways. The summer of 2022 exposed us to ever more extreme heat waves in North America, Europe, and Asia. For instance, the heat wave in India and Pakistan reached temperatures of 49C in Nawabshah, Pakistan. North America too experienced devastating heat waves and wildfires. Los Angeles ...[Read More]

ECS SpotLight: Changes in the climate dynamics have already modified characteristics and impacts of storms in France: the case study of storm Alex 2020

April 6, 2023
ECS SpotLight: Changes in the climate dynamics have already modified characteristics and impacts of storms in France: the case study of storm Alex 2020

Extratropical cyclones play a key role in modulating the precipitation and wind in mid-latitudes and can be responsible for extreme wet and windy events. With global warming, the dynamics and thermodynamics associated with these atmospheric systems are being affected. However, due to the complexity of modelling the climate system, a challenge arises when evaluating the influence that climate chang ...[Read More]

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

and August 30, 2022
NP Interviews: Davide Faranda (CNRS) on the topic “global warming and extreme events in Europe”

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

June 17, 2022
A few reasons making the June 2022 French Heatwave too hot & too soon

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

May 26, 2022
ClimarisQ: A game on the complexity of the climate systems and the extreme events

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]

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?

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]

A new European effort to better understand extreme weather

November 12, 2020
A new European effort to better understand extreme weather

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]

Can we connect the exceptional floods in France and Italy associated with the storm Alex to climate change?

October 14, 2020

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]