Special Issue "Geo-Hydrological Extreme Events in the Mediterranean and Black Sea Areas"

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Meteorology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 October 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Guido Paliaga
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection IRPI, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 00185 Rome, Italy
Interests: spatial and temporal cluster analysis of climatology remote sensing data and relationships with natural hazards; fractal and chaos in natural hazards; relationships between anthropogenic land modifications and natural hazards
Dr. Antonio Parodi
E-Mail Website
Co-Guest Editor
CIMA Research Foundation, 17100 Savona, Italy
Interests: high-resolution numerical weather prediction; data assimilation; high-performance computing
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Dr. Marina Bernardi
E-Mail Website
Co-Guest Editor
CESI SpA, Raffaele Rubattino, 54, 20134 Milano, Italy
Interests: lightning physics; lightning detection systems; lightning and thunderstorm hazards; extreme meteorological events

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is dedicated to the geo-hydrological severe events that frequently hit the Mediterranean and Black Sea Areas, particularly the coastlines and hinterland of western Italy and southern France, including Sardinia and Corse. From the year 2000, many intense rain events have hit the area, causing large damages and casualties: precipitation peak intensity reached the maximum of about 180 mm/h in the Genoa Metropolitan area (I) in 2011, but very high intensities have been recorded during several other events both in Italy and in France.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to focus on both the geo-hydrological hazard associated to extreme events and on the meteorological configuration that originates them, including the monitoring techniques. Both flood/flash flood and diffuse shallow landslides are triggered by heavy rains and cause devastating effects, often involving urban/peri-urban areas and infrastructures: any contribution in these areas of research is welcome, together with studies concerning the atmospheric processes responsible for the triggering mechanisms and other extreme events such as supercell thunderstorms, windstorms, and downbursts.

Additionally, the climatologic perspective is encouraged, as climate change consequences in the Mediterranean area are predicted to affect human activities and the environment with an increase in both intensity and frequency of severe events.

Dr. Guido Paliaga
Dr. Antonio Parodi
Dr. Marina Bernardi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • geo-hydrological hazard
  • flash flood
  • shallow landslides
  • deep convection
  • supercell
  • numerical modeling
  • downburst

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

Article
Rainfall Threshold for Shallow Landslides Initiation and Analysis of Long-Term Rainfall Trends in a Mediterranean Area
Atmosphere 2020, 11(12), 1367; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11121367 - 17 Dec 2020
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 922
Abstract
The effects of climate change on landslide activity may have important environmental, socio-economic, and political consequences. In the last decades, several short-term extreme rainfall events affected Mediterranean regions, resulted in damaging geo-hydrological processes and casualties. It is unequivocal that the impact of landslides [...] Read more.
The effects of climate change on landslide activity may have important environmental, socio-economic, and political consequences. In the last decades, several short-term extreme rainfall events affected Mediterranean regions, resulted in damaging geo-hydrological processes and casualties. It is unequivocal that the impact of landslides in several Mediterranean countries is increasing with time, but until now, there has been little or no quantitative data to support these increases. In this paper, both rainfall conditions for the occurrence of shallow landslides and rainfall trends were investigated in the Portofino promontory, which extends in the Ligurian Sea, where heavy rainfall and related ground effects often occur. Adopting a frequentist approach, the empirical intensity-duration threshold was estimated. Our findings highlight that the rainfall intensity required to trigger landslides is lower for the same duration than those expected in other similar environments, suggesting a high susceptibility to rainfall-induced landslides in the Portofino territory. Further, the Mann-Kendall test and Hurst exponent were used for detecting potential trends. Analysis of long-term rainfall time series showed statistically significant increasing trends in short duration precipitation occurrence and rainfall rates, suggesting a possible future scenario with a more frequent exceedance of the threshold triggering value and an increase of landslide risk. Full article
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Planned Papers

The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.

A Regional-Scale Landslide Activation Index (lai) for Shallow Landslides and Debris Flow Forecasting: the Abruzzo Case Study

Barbara Tomassetti1, Annalina Lombardi1, Giancarlo Boscaino3, Marco Verdecchia2 and Valentina Colaiuda1,2

1CETEMPS, Center of Excellence, University of L’Aquila, via Vetoio snc, 67100 – L’Aquila (Italy);
2DSFC – Department of Physical and Chemical Sciences, University of L’Aquila, via Vetoio snc, 67100 - L’Aquila (Italy)
3Servizio Idrologia, Idrografico e Mareografico, via Catullo, 2 - 65127 Pescara (Italy).

Abstract: Inundations, landslides, debris flows and stream floods are common natural processes in

Italy. Almost 90% of the national territory is affected by landslide processes, being one third classified as rapid processes triggered by heavy or persistent precipitation. Early Warning Systems are increasingly applied to mitigate the risks posed by natural hazards.  As commonly recognized by the scientific community, heavy and sudden precipitation events are increasing in the last decades, due to global warning: therefore, we can expect increasing rates and increasing population exposure to this kind of hydrogeological risk, consequently. Landslides triggered by rains represent a high threat to life and human properties, therefore, predicting their spatial and temporal occurrence is an important scientific and operational-issue. For this reason, many landslide forecasting techniques have been developed at regional scale, especially for shallow landslides and debris flows that are generally activated by severe precipitation events. The forecast is based on rainfall quantification, which represents the most easily detectable physical quantity. Then, forecasting landslide models are usually based on rainfall empirical thresholds, that needs to be locally defined and often revised for each element at risk, according to historical data that are not always available. Their occurrence can be correctly assessed in space and time only through a sound basis of knowledge to be acquired through the scientific use of a large number of historical documents.

In this works, starting from the rainfall spatialization techniques, available in the CHyM hydrological model, we propose a new index to forecast the shallow landslides and debris flow: Landslide Activation Index (LAI). This index considers the drained rainfall in each point of the rebuilt drainage network during the runoff time and can be used to predict landslide risk over wide areas, by using a unique threshold over slopes, susceptible to collapse.

Preliminary results show as the LAI index is able to identify main areas at landslide risk for different meteorological events, including scenarios where activation of debris flow and shallow landslides is due to rapid snowmelt.

 

Identifying Storm Nests and Most Conflictive Areas in Barcelona Analysing Significant Rainfall Episodes in Barcelona in 2013 – 2018 Period

Esbrí, T. Rigo and M.C. Llasat.

Abstract: Flash floods threaten Barcelona in a recursive way, damaging the city infrastructures, and endangering the safety of the population. The urbanistic planning and socioeconomic distribution, associated with the topography and other geographic signatures, makes that these flood events do not affect in the same way all  the city. This is a key point in the surveillance and emergency tasks, which need some patterns and models that can improve the capacity of response. The aim of this work is to gain a better understanding of such events to add valuable information on the prediction and management of those situations. For this purpose, both radar and ground observational data have been combined to identify the most important precipitation episodes for Barcelona during a six-years period. To make the analysis easier, a new algorithm has been developed to determine the hot-spot areas of thunderstorms. Finally, those episodes with greater impact have been deeply analysed.  The final objective is to be able to improve the actions developed by the entity responsible for stormwater management and which have earned the UN to recognize Barcelona as a model city for resilience against floods.

 

 

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