ENCIRCLE
Evaluating the Changing Risk of Cyclones for Italian Precipitation Extremes
We advance the prediction of the impact of climate change on Mediterranean cyclones and precipitation extremes by leveraging SMILEs (Single Model Initial-condition Large Ensembles) and CORDEX (Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment) data. SMILEs provide a valuable ensemble of simulations from a single climate model. CORDEX data offer high-resolution regional climate information. By integrating these two datasets, we enhance our a) understanding of the processes controlling changes in the frequency and intensity of Mediterranean and extratropical cyclones, b) quantify the uncertainties in their future changes and c) and evaluate their impacts on regional precipitation extremes. The focus is on patterns and case studies impacting the Italian peninsula, with the goal of improving climate projections and risk management under climate change.
There will always be a trade-off between the spatial resolution and ensemble size of climate simulations. Hence, we need to make the best use out of complementary datasets.
The Project
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The Team
A collaboration between the Italian National Research Council and the Department of Physics of the University of Bologna (Italy)
The Papers
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The Project
A collaboration between the National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Atmospheric Science and Climate (CNR-ISAC), and the Department of Physics of the University of Bologna.
ENCIRCLE is funded by the Next Generation EU, via the Research Projects of National Relevance 2022 call (280k euro). The project is composed of four WPs addressing different aspects of the challenge of understanding future changes in extratropical cyclones and their associated precipitation extremes.
- WP1 lays the foundations, by developing methodologies to identify atmospheric states at an high-risk of triggering cyclones and extreme precipitation events
- WP2 answers the question of how the frequency of such high-risk states is modulated by internal variability and climate change under future climate scenarios using data from global large-ensemble simulations
- WP3 looks at regional processes, and how precipitation extremes at different accumulation timescales are modulated if an high-risk atmospheric state were to occur in the future, at different levels of warming
- WP4 aims to provide synthesis by gathering and combination the information on changes in the frequency and intensity of the extreme events provided by WP2 and WP3
The Team
Giuseppe Zappa, PI
Giuseppe is a senior scientist at CNR-ISAC, and he is responsible for coordinating and managing ENCIRCLE. He holds a PhD in Science and Management of Climate Change from Ca' Foscari University of Venice, and several years of research experience at the University of Reading (UK), where he has become an expert on the impact of climate change on mid-latitude atmospheric circulation, storm tracks and Mediterranean climate change. He has been a contributing author to the 5th and 6th IPCC Assessment reports.
Salvatore Pascale, Co-PI
Salvatore, Ph.D., is Junior Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy (DIFA), University of Bologna, and is responsible for the University of Bologna research unit. He holds a M.Sc. in Physics, and a Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Reading, UK. He has been a research fellow for several years in prestigious institutions in the US (CalTech, GFDL, University of Stanford), where his research has contributed to understanding the impact of climate change on the hydroclimate, with a particular emphasis on extreme events (e.g., droughts, extreme precipitation) in monsoonal and Mediterranean climates.
Paolo Ghinassi, Research
Paolo is a postdoc researcher at CNR-ISAC since 2020. His research interests include synoptic and dynamic meteorology and the development of diagnostics to quantify the impacts of climate change on the atmospheric circulation. He has worked on the study of tropical cyclones and Rossby Wave Packets in very high-resolution climate simulations in the Destination Earth and PRIMAVERA projects, and he is now contributing to assess changes in the frequency of high-impact Mediterranean cyclones in large initial condition ensembles.
Cristina Iacomino, Research
Cristina is a physics graduate and a research fellow at the Department of Physics and Astronomy “Augusto Righi” of the University of Bologna. Her research focuses on extreme precipitation events. She is currently contributing to WP1, by working on the development of high-risk atmospheric circulation patterns for Italian precipitation extremes using observational and reanalyses datasets.
Alice Portal, Research
Alice is a post-doc working at CNR-ISAC on attribution changes in regional precipitation extremes. As a postdoc at the University of Bern, she has contributed to the MedCyclones COST action efforts by studying the relation between Mediterranean cyclones and compound weather extremes. After completing her MSc in theoretical physics, Alice obtained a PhD jointly from the University of Milano – Bicocca and from Ecole Normale Superieure (PSL, Paris), with a thesis entitled “The influence of land temperatures on the winter mid-latitude atmospheric circulation”. Her scientific interests lie around the domains of large- and synoptic-scale atmospheric dynamics, but she is also engaged in the questions behind the communication of climate and weather emergencies to a wide public.
Federico Grazzini, Collaborator
Federico, Senior meteorologist at ARPAE Emilia-Romagna, physics graduate and PhD in meteorology, advises the project on relevant meteorological processes for Italian weather extremes. He has been working in the field for more than 30 years with significant experience abroad. He worked for five years at the European Centre for Medium-Term Forecasting (ECMWF), Reading (GB), and recently six years as researcher at the LMU University of Munich, specializing in forecasting extreme events of precipitation.He is engaged in climate communication; is co-author of the book “Fa un po’ caldo. Breve storia del riscaldamento climatico e dei suoi protagonisti” (Fabbri Ed., 2020), and writes about meteorology and climatology for the weekly magazine Internazionale.
Claudia Simolo, Co-I
Claudia is a researcher at CNR-ISAC, helping by advising and co-supervising postdocs on various statistical themes, going from the quantification of the role of internal climate variability on climate trends to the analysis of return levels of extreme precipitation events.
Marcello Iotti, Collaborator
Marcello, a researcher at CNR-IMATI with a PhD on Data Science and Computation from the University of Bologna, externally collaborates with ENCIRCLE by providing advice on computational and machine learning aspects relevant to the project.
Publications
- Marra F, Pascale S, Zappa G: "Robust increase in the tail heaviness of Mediterranean precipitation extremes (In preparation)
- Iacomino C. et al: "High-risk circulation pattern for Italian precipitation extremes (in preparation)"
