The Climate Observatory, research area at the Institute of Biometeorology, National Research Council (IBIMET-CNR), meets the opportunities and demands of basic and applied research in the sector of climate and ecosystems sciences.
Among the general objectives of the Observatory, the participation in national and international projects, in co-operation with other Institutes and Research Centres, and the participation to projects carried on by other research groups at IBIMET-CNR, in a multi-disciplinary context.
To pursue such objectives, the observatory carries on scientific researches on the variability and trends of the global and regional climate, the characterization of climatic hazards, the dynamical and environmental modeling of land systems, the application of statistical methods to the climatic analysis are the basic instruments of the observatory.
The management of large climatic and environmental databases, mathematical models of the climate system (rams, regional atmospheric modeling system), hydrological simulation models, advanced systems for statistical analysis.
The geographical areas of application are most often the north Atlantic, Europe, Mediterranean, equatorial and northern Africa, and the monsoon areas.

Contact Person: Dr. Francesco Meneguzzo
Email: f.meneguzzo@ibimet.cnr.it
Fax: +39 – 055 – 308910

Multi-scale climate analysis and prediction

The climate system is forced by natural factors (solar energy output, volcanic ash and aerosols, internal dynamics and feedbacks) and anthropogenic forcings (emission of greenhouse gases and aerosols, land use changes).
While there is general agreement at least on the sign (positive) of the thermal response of the climate system, the surface and the atmosphere, to the current anthropogenic forcings, yet with large uncertainties concerning the warming rate, the chance of abrupt warming resulting from temporary heat storage in large natural reservoirs, especially the deep oceans, the effects of land use, vegetation and carbon cycle feedbacks and of water vapor feedbacks, much uncertainty is left even on the sign of changes in the intensity of the hydrological cycles in the warming climate.

The analysis of current and future climate variability and trends is performed on a variety of spatial and time scales and concerns global and regional atmospheric circulation patterns, atmospheric transient features (storms), air masses, precipitation and temperature fields, intense and extreme events (rainstorms, floods, hail, wind gusts)

Teleconnections

The identification and the climatic-scale prediction of mechanisms driving the average circulation, the North Atlantic storm track and, in particular, the precipitation input is critical at least to the drought, low river discharge and forest fire risks assessment, and is also useful to seasonal forecasting systems and climate scenario evaluation.
While the leading winter mechanisms have longer been studied and a sound knowledge basis is available, much less is known about the processes leading to the mid-latitude summer climate.
The connection of the North Atlantic, European and Mediterranean summer climate with diabatic processes occurring over tropical areas (Atlantic ocean, West Africa, Indian ocean, Indian and south-east Asia) has been studied by means of statistical and numerical techniques, based on large global and regional databases.
SST anomalies and monsoons are found to produce remarkable effects, with the West Africa monsoon appearing as critical to drive the precipitation variability around central, western and northern Mediterranean land areas.

The daily precipitation events around the Arno river Basin, exceeding given thresholds relevant for local flash-floods and floods, are growing in frequency both locally and averaged over the sub-basins, today being more frequent than in the last 150 years, following the regional sea surface warming and the increase in the vertical lapse rates.
The future climate (Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis, CCCma, scenarios), shows a further increase in the frequency of excessive daily rainfalls until at least 2015, about 30% higher than in the current climate.

Autorità di bacino del Fiume Arno
(Legge18 maggio 1989, n. 183 - Legge 4 dicembre 1993, n. 493)

The project “Climate reanalysis and prediction over the Arno river basin”, funded by the Arno River basin Authority (Italy), aims at providing quantitative information concerning the past, current and future variability and trends of heavy rainfall and drought occurring over the same basin (about 9200 km2). The broad scope is the support to the periodic update of the distributed constraints system around the basin, the design and management of flood protection works, to the targeting of the local weather forecasting system, and water quality and conservation policies.