Silvio Gualdi
CMCC, Climate Simulations and Predictions, Faculty Member
Research Interests: Geography, Statistics, Plant Ecology, Climate Change, Climate Change Adaptation, and 10 moreApplied Statistics, Community Ecology, Ecology, Quantitative Methods, Spatial Statistics, Climate Change Adaptation And Mitigation Strategies, Climate Change Impacts, Bayesian statistics & modelling, Italy, and Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment
Seasonal forecasts are essential to offer early-warning decision support systems that can help to reduce the socio-economics related risk associated to some anomalous events. Advances in statistical prediction are often associated with... more
Seasonal forecasts are essential to offer early-warning decision support systems that can help to reduce the socio-economics related risk associated to some anomalous events. Advances in statistical prediction are often associated with the enhance of understanding that usually leads to improve dynamical prediction. Thereby, both approaches are frequently combined in order to increase the robustness of the forecast.
Research Interests:
The influence of the Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) on the North Atlantic storm track and eddy-driven jet in the winter season is assessed via a coordinated analysis of idealized simulations with state-of-the-art coupled models.... more
The influence of the Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) on the North Atlantic storm track and eddy-driven jet in the winter season is assessed via a coordinated analysis of idealized simulations with state-of-the-art coupled models. Data used are obtained from a multimodel ensemble of AMV± experiments conducted in the framework of the Decadal Climate Prediction Project component C. These experiments are performed by nudging the surface of the Atlantic Ocean to states defined by the superimposition of observed AMV± anomalies onto the model climatology. A robust extratropical response is found in the form of a wave train extending from the Pacific to the Nordic seas. In the warm phase of the AMV compared to the cold phase, the Atlantic storm track is typically contracted and less extended poleward and the low-level jet is shifted toward the equator in the eastern Atlantic. Despite some robust features, the picture of an uncertain and model-dependent response of the Atlantic jet e...
Research Interests:
Introduction The Mediterranean region has quite a unique character that results both from physiographic conditions and historical and societal developments. Because of the latitude range it covers, the Mediterranean region is a transition... more
Introduction The Mediterranean region has quite a unique character that results both from physiographic conditions and historical and societal developments. Because of the latitude range it covers, the Mediterranean region is a transition area under the influence of both the temperate mid-latitude climate and the hotter-drier North-African climate. In addition, the region features a nearly enclosed sea surrounded by highly urbanized littorals and mountains in which numerous rivers have their ..
Research Interests:
In a world with increased international focus on energy use, benchmarking consumption across countries can inform decision makers about their country’s relative performance and opportunities for improvement. During the past decades, the... more
In a world with increased international focus on energy use, benchmarking consumption across countries can inform decision makers about their country’s relative performance and opportunities for improvement. During the past decades, the energy field has been on the frontline of this exercise with energy consumption-and by association energy intensity and productivitybecoming a considerable dimension for policy-related international cross-country comparison. However, benchmarking is more meaningful when comparisons are normalized for uncontrollable factors. One of these factors is climate variation that occurs across countries. The aim of this reseach is to provide methodologies to quantify the effect of climate conditions on energy consumption in the residential and commercial sectors as space heating and cooling incrinsgly represent the largest share of building energy consumption in most countries. We developed a time series of population weighted national climate indices which we...
Research Interests:
Climate scenarios produce climate change-related information and data at a geographical scale generally not useful for coastal planners to study impacts locally. To provide a suitable characterization of climate-related hazards in the... more
Climate scenarios produce climate change-related information and data at a geographical scale generally not useful for coastal planners to study impacts locally. To provide a suitable characterization of climate-related hazards in the North Adriatic Sea coast, a model chain, with progressively higher resolution was developed and implemented. It includes Global and Regional Circulation Models representing atmospheric and oceanic dynamics for the global and sub-continental domains, and hydrodynamic/wave models useful to analyze physical impacts of sea-level rise and coastal erosion at a sub-national/local scale. The model chain, integrating multiple types of numerical models running at different spatial scales, provides information about spatial and temporal patterns of relevant hazard metrics (e.g., sea temperature, atmospheric pressure, wave height), usable to represent climate-induced events causing potential environmental or socio-economic damages. Furthermore, it allows the discu...
Research Interests:
The Mediterranean is expected to be one of the most prominent and vulnerable climate change “hotspots” of the twenty-first century, and the physical mechanisms underlying this finding are still not clear. Furthermore, complex interactions... more
The Mediterranean is expected to be one of the most prominent and vulnerable climate change “hotspots” of the twenty-first century, and the physical mechanisms underlying this finding are still not clear. Furthermore, complex interactions and feedbacks involving ocean–atmosphere–land–biogeochemical processes play a prominent role in modulating the climate and environment of the Mediterranean region on a range of spatial and temporal scales. Therefore, it is critical to provide robust climate change information for use in vulnerability–impact–adaptation assessment studies considering the Mediterranean as a fully coupled environmental system. The Mediterranean Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (Med-CORDEX) initiative aims at coordinating the Mediterranean climate modeling community toward the development of fully coupled regional climate simulations, improving all relevant components of the system from atmosphere and ocean dynamics to land surface, hydrology, and biogeochemi...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Rising concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) is expected to affect tropical cyclone (TC) intensity, frequency, and genesis locations through an increase in global mean sea surface temperature (SST). This has been an area of... more
ABSTRACT Rising concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) is expected to affect tropical cyclone (TC) intensity, frequency, and genesis locations through an increase in global mean sea surface temperature (SST). This has been an area of intensive research for the past few decades with increasing use of high-resolution global climate models (GCMs) and various downscaling approaches [see Knutson et al. (2010) for a recent review]. The assumption appears to be that the dominant effect of increasing CO2 on TCs is through an increase in tropical mean SST. However, recent modeling studies suggest that both spatial patterns of SST warming and higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations can significantly affect global and regional TC statistics independent of the global mean SST warming (Vecchi et al. 2008; Zhao et al. 2009; Held and Zhao 2011). In this article we focus on an examination of the direct or fast effect of CO2 on global TC frequency from the multiple models participating in the U.S. CLIVAR Hurricane Working Group (HWG). An understanding of the direct effect of CO2 is important for both near- term TC projections and assessing the impact of geo- engineering schemes on future TC statistics, especially if as a consequence the atmospheric CO2 concentration increases with significantly delayed or alleviated SST warming.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The aim of this study is to describe the behaviour of tropical dynamics in the ECHAM4 model when increased vertical resolution around the tropopause and in the planetary boundary layer is used. In this work we perform experiments with the... more
The aim of this study is to describe the behaviour of tropical dynamics in the ECHAM4 model when increased vertical resolution around the tropopause and in the planetary boundary layer is used. In this work we perform experiments with the ECHAM4 model using T30 horizontal resolution and 19 and 42 vertical levels. The impact of the increased vertical resolution on the simulation of tropical clouds and precipitation has been investigated. Therefore, the dynamic fields related to tropical convection have been analyzed. The results suggest a beneficial effect of the increased number of vertical levels on the convective scheme performance and on the related dynamic fields over the Tropics. The improvement of the rainfall climatologies in the 42-level model has been explained via the impact of vertical resolution on the cloud structure. In the cloud spectrum of the L42 simulation, a third peak appears around 600 hPa, revealing that when using higher vertical resolution the convective parametrization starts to represent cumulus congestus clouds.
Research Interests:
In this work the authors investigate possible changes in the intensity of rainfall events associated with tropical cyclones (TCs) under idealized forcing scenarios, including a uniformly warmer climate, with a special focus on landfalling... more
In this work the authors investigate possible changes in the intensity of rainfall events associated with tropical cyclones (TCs) under idealized forcing scenarios, including a uniformly warmer climate, with a special focus on landfalling storms. A new set of experiments designed within the U.S. Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Hurricane Working Group allows disentangling the relative role of changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide from that played by sea surface temperature (SST) in changing the amount of precipitation associated with TCs in a warmer world. Compared to the present-day simulation, an increase in TC precipitation was found under the scenarios involving SST increases. On the other hand, in a CO2-doubling-only scenario, the changes in TC rainfall are small and it was found that, on average, TC rainfall tends to decrease compared to the present-day climate. The results of this study highlight the contribution of landfalling TCs to the projected increase in ...
Research Interests:
The double–intertropical convergence zone (DI) systematic error, affecting state-of-the-art coupled general circulation models (CGCMs), is examined in the multimodel Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment... more
The double–intertropical convergence zone (DI) systematic error, affecting state-of-the-art coupled general circulation models (CGCMs), is examined in the multimodel Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) ensemble of simulations of the twentieth-century climate. The aim of this study is to quantify the DI error on precipitation in the tropical Pacific, with a specific focus on the relationship between the DI error and the representation of large-scale vertical circulation regimes in climate models. The DI rainfall signal is analyzed using a regime-sorting approach for the vertical circulation regimes. Through the use of this compositing technique, precipitation events are regime sorted based on the large-scale vertical motions, as represented by the midtropospheric Lagrangian pressure tendency ω500 dynamical proxy. This methodology allows partition of the precipitation signal into deep and shallow convective components. Following the regime-s...
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Environmental Science, Oceanography, Climate Change, Carbon Dioxide, Climate, and 15 moreSensitivity Analysis, Global Warming, Global change, Atmospheric sciences, Numerical Simulation, Salinity, Ocean Circulation, Heat Flux, Greenhouse Gas, General Circulation Models, Climate Warming, Southern Oscillation, Forcing, El Nino, and Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Geology, Oceanography, Climate variability, Heat Transport, Low Frequency, and 14 moreNorth Atlantic Oscillation, Climate Dynamics, Atmospheric sciences, North Atlantic, Negative Feedback, Ocean Circulation, Air-Sea Interaction, Thermohaline Circulation, Conceptual Model, Oscillations, Atmospheric Circulation, Positive Feedback, Large Scale, and Interannual Variability
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
33 In this study, we analyse the observed long-term discharge time-series of the Rhine, the Danube, the Rhone 34 and the Po rivers. These rivers are characterised by different seasonal cycles reflecting the diverse climates 35 and... more
33 In this study, we analyse the observed long-term discharge time-series of the Rhine, the Danube, the Rhone 34 and the Po rivers. These rivers are characterised by different seasonal cycles reflecting the diverse climates 35 and morphologies of the Alpine basins. However, despite the intensive and varied water management 36 adopted in the four basins, we found common features in the trend and low-frequency variability of the 37 spring discharge timings. All the discharge time-series display a tendency towards earlier spring peaks of 38 more than two weeks per century. These results can be explained in terms of snowmelt, total precipitation 39 (i.e. the sum of snowfall and rainfall) and rainfall variability. The relative importance of these factors might 40 be different in each basin. However, we show that the change of seasonality of total precipitation plays a 41 major role in the earlier spring runoff over most of the Alps. 42
Land surface and atmosphere are interlocked by the hydrological and energy cycles and the effects of soil water-air coupling can modulate near-surface temperatures. In this work, three paired experiments were designed to evaluate impacts... more
Land surface and atmosphere are interlocked by the hydrological and energy cycles and the effects of soil water-air coupling can modulate near-surface temperatures. In this work, three paired experiments were designed to evaluate impacts of different soil moisture initial and boundary conditions on summer temperatures in the Mediterranean transitional climate regime region. In this area, evapotranspiration is not limited by solar radiation, rather by soil moisture, which therefore controls the boundary layer variability. Extremely dry, extremely wet and averagely humid ground conditions are imposed to two global climate models at the beginning of the warm and dry season. Then, sensitivity experiments, where atmosphere is alternatively interactive with and forced by land surface, are launched. The initial soil state largely affects summer near-surface temperatures: dry soils contribute to warm the lower atmosphere and exacerbate heat extremes, while wet terrains suppress thermal peak...
Research Interests:
Meridional transport of heat by transient atmospheric eddies is a key component of the energy budget of the middle and high latitude regions. The heat flux at relevant frequencies is also part of a dynamical interaction between eddies and... more
Meridional transport of heat by transient atmospheric eddies is a key component of the energy budget of the middle and high latitude regions. The heat flux at relevant frequencies is also part of a dynamical interaction between eddies and mean flow. In this study we investigate how the poleward heat flux by high frequency atmospheric transient eddies is modulated by North Atlantic weather regimes in reanalysis data. Circulation regimes are estimated via a clustering method, a jet latitude index and a blocking index. Heat transport is defined as advection of moist static energy. The focus of the analysis is on synoptic frequencies but results for slightly longer time scales are reported. Results show that the synoptic eddy heat flux is substantially modulated by mid-latitude weather regimes on a regional scale in midlatitude and polar regions. On a zonal mean sense, the phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation do not change significantly the high latitude synoptic heat flux, whereas ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Heavy precipitation is a major hazard over Europe. It is well established that climate model projections indicate a tendency toward more extreme daily rainfall events. It is still uncertain, however, how this changing intensity translates... more
Heavy precipitation is a major hazard over Europe. It is well established that climate model projections indicate a tendency toward more extreme daily rainfall events. It is still uncertain, however, how this changing intensity translates at the subdaily time scales. The main goal of the present study is to examine possible differences in projected changes in intense precipitation events over Europe at the daily and subdaily (3-hourly) time scales using a state-of-the-science climate model. The focus will be on one representative concentration pathway (RCP8.5), considered as illustrative of a high rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations over this century. There are statistically significant differences in intense precipitation projections (up to 40%) when comparing the results at the daily and subdaily time scales. Over northeastern Europe, projected precipitation intensification at the 3-hourly scale is lower than at the daily scale. On the other hand, Spain and the weste...
Research Interests:
Summary This document describes the CMCC Earth System Model (ESM) for the representation of the carbon cycle in the atmosphere, land, and ocean system. The structure of the report follows the software architecture of the full system. It... more
Summary This document describes the CMCC Earth System Model (ESM) for the representation of the carbon cycle in the atmosphere, land, and ocean system. The structure of the report follows the software architecture of the full system. It is intended to give a technical description of the numerical models at the base of the ESM, and how they are coupled
Research Interests:
Future climate change over the Mediterranean area is investigated by means of climate model simulations covering the twenty-first century that take into account different anthropogenic greenhouse-gas-emission scenarios. This chapter first... more
Future climate change over the Mediterranean area is investigated by means of climate model simulations covering the twenty-first century that take into account different anthropogenic greenhouse-gas-emission scenarios. This chapter first gives some new insights on these projections coming from the use of new methods, including the coupling at the regional scale of the atmospheric component to a Mediterranean Sea component. A synthesis of the expected changes of key aspects of the Mediterranean regional climate, obtained with a wide range of models and downscaling methods, is then presented. This includes an overview of not only expected changes in the mean climate and climate extremes but also possible changes in Mediterranean Sea temperature, salinity, circulation, water and heat budgets, and sea level. The chapter ends with some advanced results on the way to deal with uncertainties in climate projections and some discussion on the confidence that we can attribute to these projec...
This study explores the role of model resolution on the simulation of precipitation and on the estimate of its future change in the Mediterranean region. It compares the results of two regional climate models (RCMs, with two different... more
This study explores the role of model resolution on the simulation of precipitation and on the estimate of its future change in the Mediterranean region. It compares the results of two regional climate models (RCMs, with two different horizontal grid resolutions, 0.44 and 0.11 degs, covering the whole Mediterranean region) and of the global climate model (GCM, 0.75 degs) that has provided the boundary conditions for them. The regional climate models include an interactive oceanic component with a resolution of 1/16 degs. The period 1960–2100 and the representative concentration pathways RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 are considered. The results show that, in the present climate, increasing resolution increases total precipitation and its extremes over steep orography, while it has the opposite effect over flat areas and the sea. Considering climate change, in all simulations, total precipitation will decrease over most of the considered domain except at the northern boundary, where it will incre...
Research Interests:
Seasonal rainfall in the Caribbean Basin is known to be modulated by sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and particularly those in the Equatorial Pacific and Atlantic and the Tropical North... more
Seasonal rainfall in the Caribbean Basin is known to be modulated by sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and particularly those in the Equatorial Pacific and Atlantic and the Tropical North Atlantic. However, little is known about how these major oceans influence the seasonal precipitation of individual small island states within the region as climate variability at the island-scale may differ from the Caribbean as a whole. Correlation and composite analyses were determined using monthly rainfall data for the southernmost island of the Caribbean, Trinidad, and an extended area of global SSTAs. In addition to the subregions that are known to modulate Caribbean rainfall, our analyses show that sea surface temperatures (SSTs) located in the subtropical South Pacific, the South Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico also have weak (r2 < 0.5) yet significant influences on the islands’ early rainy season (ERS) and late rainy season (LRS) precipitatio...
Research Interests:
Proximity and access to water have long been central to human culture and accordingly deliver countless societal benefits. Over 200 million people live on Europe's coastline, and aquatic environments are the top recreational... more
Proximity and access to water have long been central to human culture and accordingly deliver countless societal benefits. Over 200 million people live on Europe's coastline, and aquatic environments are the top recreational destination in the region. In terms of public health, interactions with 'blue space' (eg, coasts, rivers, lakes) are often considered solely in terms of risk (eg, drowning, microbial pollution). Exposure to blue space can, however, promote health and well-being and prevent disease, although underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. The BlueHealth project aims to understand the relationships between exposure to blue space and health and well-being, to map and quantify the public health impacts of changes to both natural blue spaces and associated urban infrastructure in Europe, and to provide evidence-based information to policymakers on how to maximise health benefits associated with interventions in and around aquatic environments. To achieve the...
Research Interests: Research Design, Health, Public Health, Humans, Europe, and 3 moreRECREATION, Social Planning, and Fresh water
Significant predictive skill for the mean winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO) has been recently reported for a number of different seasonal forecasting systems. These findings are important in exploring the... more
Significant predictive skill for the mean winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO) has been recently reported for a number of different seasonal forecasting systems. These findings are important in exploring the predictability of the natural system, but they are also important from a socioeconomic point of view, since the ability to predict the wintertime atmospheric circulation anomalies over the North Atlantic well ahead in time will have significant benefits for North American and European countries. In contrast to the tropics, for the mid latitudes the predictive skill of many forecasting systems at the seasonal time scale has been shown to be low to moderate. The recent findings are promising in this regard, suggesting that better forecasts are possible, provided that key components of the climate system are initialized realistically and the coupled models are able to simulate adequately the dominant processes and teleconnections associated with low-f...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Extreme precipitation events in the Mediterranean region during the cool season are strongly affected by the export of moist air from tropical and subtropical areas into the extratropics. The aim of this paper is to present a discussion... more
Extreme precipitation events in the Mediterranean region during the cool season are strongly affected by the export of moist air from tropical and subtropical areas into the extratropics. The aim of this paper is to present a discussion of the major research efforts on this subject and to formulate a summary of our understanding of this phenomenon, along with its recent past trends from a climate change perspective. The issues addressed are: a discussion of several case studies; the origin of the air moisture and the important role of atmospheric rivers for fueling the events; the mechanism responsible for the intensity of precipitation during the events, and the possible role of global warming in recent past trends in extreme weather events over the Mediterranean region.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ÇP*¥╓¢╦* Xì▌▐ ä* µ* ª· T*»< δ ó*** aµ■**** $ Ü∙*** ä* ä* Ü∙* φö*√ á£* oΘù⌐ Σ*{░╪ φöφöφö _Θ* φöφöφöδ S║ S║ S║ S║∞*∞* dP*─ B* ZD3∞*∞* P** Z∞*∞*∞*╠*╠*╠*╠*╠*╠*** Dear Piero, I think it is a very good and comprehensive description of the climate in the region. The style and lengths are appropriate, th...more
NCAR CCSM-3. A 100-year control run with forcing data of 1990 is conducted to check a drift of the coupled model. Moreover, the model sensitivity is investigated through the CMIP-2 runs with 1% annual increase of CO 2 , for more than... more
NCAR CCSM-3. A 100-year control run with forcing data of 1990 is conducted to check a drift of the coupled model. Moreover, the model sensitivity is investigated through the CMIP-2 runs with 1% annual increase of CO 2 , for more than 150-year integrations with both T42 and T85 coupled models. The second goal of this project is to develop a high-resolution coupled climate model. Numerical experiments using atmosphere models are conducted to investigate reproducibility of regional scale phenomena with different model resolutions; T42T341. Further, numerical experiments with an ocean model with a horizontal resolution of 1/10 degree are conducted. This "eddy-resolving" ocean model can realistically simulate the path of western boundary current such as Kuroshio. To evaluate impact of global warming to the Japan Sea, a regional ocean model with ultra high resolution (1/36 degree) is developed by Kyushu University. The model can reproduce the surface, intermediate circulation an...
The Mediterranean has been identified as one of the most responsive regions to climate change. It has been conjectured that one of the effects of a warmer climate could be to make the Mediterranean Sea prone to the formation of... more
The Mediterranean has been identified as one of the most responsive regions to climate change. It has been conjectured that one of the effects of a warmer climate could be to make the Mediterranean Sea prone to the formation of hurricanes. Already in the present climate regime, however, a few of the numerous low pressure systems that form in the area develop a dynamical evolution similar to the one of tropical cyclones. Even if their spatial extent is generally smaller and the life cycle shorter compared to tropical cyclones, such storms produce severe damage on the highly populated coastal areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. This study, based on the analysis of individual realistically simulated storms in homogeneous long-term and high-resolution data from multiple climate change scenarios, shows that the projected effect of climate change on Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones is decreased frequency and a tendency toward a moderate increase of intensity.
Research Interests:
The results of survey among students in Qingdao at a national university and at a center for climate science, CLISAP, in Hamburg have been extended by the same survey among students of another European center for climate science, namely... more
The results of survey among students in Qingdao at a national university and at a center for climate science, CLISAP, in Hamburg have been extended by the same survey among students of another European center for climate science, namely CMCC in Bologna. The results from Hamburg and Bologna are very similar, indicating that the perception of the students in Hamburg, who consider creating public engagement in climate policy as the main task of climate science, is not a singularity among the young scholars in Hamburg but is shared by scholars at other European science institutions. The survey was published online by www.climateforesight.eu under
https://www.climateforesight.eu/global-policy/what-do-climate-scholars-think-about-climate-science-and-its-role-in-society-a-survey-at-cmcc/
It extends the surveying reported about in https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accre.2019.04.001
https://www.climateforesight.eu/global-policy/what-do-climate-scholars-think-about-climate-science-and-its-role-in-society-a-survey-at-cmcc/
It extends the surveying reported about in https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accre.2019.04.001