In the extratropical latitudes, weather systems such as anticyclones and cyclones host a complex environment where warm and moist air interacts with relatively cold and dry air. We study the dynamical environment that leads to cyclogenesis, the cyclone life cycle and the nature of the flow interaction with the large-scale atmospheric circulation that controls the impact on the surface weather.
Extreme weather has tremendous environmental and societal impact. We study the dynamical mechanisms which control a wide range of extreme events: from heavy precipitation, floods and strong winds, to extreme temperatures, thunderstorms and wild fires.
Water vapour can be carried over thousands of kilometers before condensing to form clouds and precipitation. Understanding their journey and its drivers are key for better understanding of the water cycle in the Earth systems, one of the major sources for uncertainties in climate models. Likewise, aerosols, such as mineral dust, interact with the many components of the Earth system, and a correct representation of their transport over long distances imposes great challenges to the modelling community.
To assess the ability to forecast extreme weather events, and to understand the underlying mechanisms, we examine their representation in numerical weather prediction models at different spatio-temporal scales: from evolving convection on hourly time scale to the regional synoptic systems and further to their representation in global circulation models that simulate the global climate under different CO2 emission scenarios.
