On Friday, December 8th, we will have an OCP Seminar given by Mireia Ginesta-Fernandez, a gradute student at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE).
This will be a hybrid in-person/zoom seminar taking place in the Comer 1st Floor Seminar Room. Please email the event contact for the zoom information. The title and abstract are provided down below.
Title: Anthropogenic climate change and the growing hazard of explosive storms in Europe: lessons from Alex, Eunice, and Xynthia
Abstract: Extratropical storms, particularly explosive storms or 'weather bombs' with exceptionally high deepening rates, present substantial risks and are susceptible to climate change. Individual storms may exhibit a complex and hardly detectable response to human-driven climate change because of the atmosphere's chaotic nature and variability at regional level. It is thus essential to understand changes in specific storms for building local resilience and advancing our overall comprehension of storm trends. To address this challenge, this study performs future projections for three specific explosive storms, each impacting different European locations: Xynthia (February 2010), Alex (October 2020), and Eunice (January 2022). Using a dataset of 105 members from the Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1), we identify analogues —storms with a similar development stage— in two periods: the present-day climate (1991-2001) and a future climate scenario characterized by high anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (RCP8.5, 2091-2101).
We evaluate trends in the frequency of occurrence of the storms and intensity, as well as on climate drivers of impacts and the underlying dynamics. For all storms, our analysis reveals an increase in precipitation and wind speed in the analogues of the future climate, specially for the explosive ones. These findings underscore the potential consequences of explosive storms modified by climate change and their subsequent impacts on various regions of Europe, offering evidence that can be used to prepare and enhance adaptation processes.
