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Atmosphere
Special Issues
Forecasting Heavy Weather in Mediterranean Region
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Forecasting Heavy Weather in Mediterranean Region

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2020) | Viewed by 9607

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Rossella Ferretti

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Physical and Chemical Sciences, Universita degli Studi dell'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy
Interests: numerical weather prediction; severe weather in the Mediterranean region; process understanding

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Mediterranean region has particular climatic and meteorological characteristics which make it scientifically attractive. Moreover, the Mediterranean basin is a well-established climate change ‘hot spot’. Hence, improving understanding and forecasting of severe to extreme weather events may help to ameliorate the representation of this phenomenon, also in the long-term climate scenarios.

The Mediterranean Sea basin is characterized by the presence of a complex orography, with mountain ranges close to a highly urbanized coast. In addition, the sea is a source of water vapor and heat, which makes this region particularly exposed to severe weather events such as flash floods, heavy rainfall, tornadoes, and tropical-like cyclones. During the warm season, heat waves and droughts represent a major threat for this region. The understanding of the physical and dynamical processes of heavy weather events as well as the impact of high-resolution data assimilation approaches are essential for improving their forecasting. These is a key point to improve in short- and long-term society resilience against the exspected increase of extremes in the Mediterranean region.

This Special Issue offers the opportunity to publish quality articles on the nowcasting, deterministic and probabilistic ensemble based approaches, impact of high-resolution data assimilation, and characterization and physical description of the severe weather events.

Prof. Rossella Ferretti
Guest Editor

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 submissions that pass pre-check are 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 2400 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

  • Numerical weather prediction
  • Ensemble prediction systems
  • High-resolution data assimilation
  • Severe to extreme events in the Mediterranean region
  • Nowcasting

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 5477 KiB  
Article
Impact of Model Resolution and Initial/Boundary Conditions in Forecasting Flood-Causing Precipitations
by Francesco Ferrari, Federico Cassola, Peter Enos Tuju, Alessandro Stocchino, Paolo Brotto and Andrea Mazzino
Atmosphere 2020, 11(6), 592; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11060592 - 4 Jun 2020
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 4006
Abstract
In late summer and autumn Mediterranean coastal regions are quite regularly affected by small-scale, flood-producing convective systems. The complexity of mesoscale triggering mechanisms, related to low-level temperature gradients, moisture convergence, and topographic effects contributes to limit the predictability of such phenomena. In the [...] Read more.
In late summer and autumn Mediterranean coastal regions are quite regularly affected by small-scale, flood-producing convective systems. The complexity of mesoscale triggering mechanisms, related to low-level temperature gradients, moisture convergence, and topographic effects contributes to limit the predictability of such phenomena. In the present work, a severe convection episode associated to a flash flood occurred in Cannes (southern France) in October 2015, is investigated by means of numerical simulations with a state-of-the-art nonhydrostatic mesoscale model. In the modelling configuration operational at the University of Genoa precipitation maxima were underestimated and misplaced. The impact of model resolution as well as initial and boundary conditions on the quantitative precipitation forecasts is analyzed and discussed. In particular, the effect of ingesting a high-resolution satellite-derived sea surface temperature field is proven to be beneficial in terms of precipitation intensity and localization, especially when also associated with the most accurate lateral boundary conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forecasting Heavy Weather in Mediterranean Region)
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27 pages, 11787 KiB  
Article
Application of Lightning Data Assimilation for the 10 October 2018 Case Study over Sardinia
by Rosa Claudia Torcasio, Stefano Federico, Silvia Puca, Gianfranco Vulpiani, Albert Comellas Prat and Stefano Dietrich
Atmosphere 2020, 11(5), 541; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11050541 - 22 May 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2360
Abstract
On 10 October 2018 an intense storm, characterized by heavy rainfall, hit the Sardinia island, reaching a peak of 452 mm of rain measured in 24 h. Among others, two particularly intense phases were registered between 3 and 6 UTC (Universal Coordinated Time), [...] Read more.
On 10 October 2018 an intense storm, characterized by heavy rainfall, hit the Sardinia island, reaching a peak of 452 mm of rain measured in 24 h. Among others, two particularly intense phases were registered between 3 and 6 UTC (Universal Coordinated Time), and between 18 and 24 UTC. The forecast of this case study is challenging because the precipitation was heavy and localized. In particular, the meteorological model used in this paper, provides a good prediction only for the second period over the eastern part of the Sardinia island. In this work, we study the impact of lightning data assimilation and horizontal grid resolution on the Very Short-term Forecast (VSF, 3 and 1 h) for this challenging case, using the RAMS@ISAC meteorological model. The comparison between the 3 h VSF control run and the simulations with lightning data assimilation shows the considerable improvement given by lightning data assimilation, especially for the precipitation that occurred in the eastern part of the island. Reducing the VSF range to 1 h, resulted in higher model performance with a good precipitation prediction over eastern and south-central Sardinia. In addition, the comparison between simulated and observed reflectivity shows an important improvement of simulations with lightning data assimilation compared to the control forecast. However, simulations assimilating lightning overestimated the precipitation in the last part of the day. The increasing of the horizontal resolution to 2 km grid spacing reduces the false alarms and improves the model performance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forecasting Heavy Weather in Mediterranean Region)
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25 pages, 11890 KiB  
Article
On the Use of Original and Bias-Corrected Climate Simulations in Regional-Scale Hydrological Scenarios in the Mediterranean Basin
by Lorenzo Sangelantoni, Barbara Tomassetti, Valentina Colaiuda, Annalina Lombardi, Marco Verdecchia, Rossella Ferretti and Gianluca Redaelli
Atmosphere 2019, 10(12), 799; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10120799 - 10 Dec 2019
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2812
Abstract
The response of Mediterranean small catchments hydrology to climate change is still relatively unexplored. Regional Climate Models (RCMs) are an established tool for evaluating the expected climate change impact on hydrology. Due to the relatively low resolution and systematic errors, RCM outputs are [...] Read more.
The response of Mediterranean small catchments hydrology to climate change is still relatively unexplored. Regional Climate Models (RCMs) are an established tool for evaluating the expected climate change impact on hydrology. Due to the relatively low resolution and systematic errors, RCM outputs are routinely and statistically post-processed before being used in impact studies. Nevertheless, these techniques can impact the original simulated trends and then impact model results. In this work, we characterize future changes of a small Apennines (Central Italy) catchment hydrology, according to two radiative forcing scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways, RCPs, 4.5 and 8.5). We also investigate the impact of a widely used bias correction technique, the empirical Quantile Mapping (QM) on the original Climate Change Signal (CCS), and the subsequent alteration of the original Hydrological Change Signal (HCS). Original and bias-corrected simulations of five RCMs from Euro-CORDEX are used to drive the CETEMPS hydrological model CHyM. HCS is assessed by using monthly mean discharge and a hydrological-stress index. HCS shows a large spatial and seasonal variability where the summer results are affected by the largest decrease of mean discharge (down to −50%). QM produces a small alteration of the original CCS, which generates a generally wetter HCS, especially during the spring season. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forecasting Heavy Weather in Mediterranean Region)
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