Present and future synoptic circulation patterns associated with cold and snowy spells over Italy
- 1Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, UMR 8212 CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, IPSL, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette cedex, France (flavio.pons@lsce.ipsl.fr)
- 2Service de Physique de l’État Condensé, CNRS UMR 3680, CEA-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- 3Meteorological Institute, CEN, University of Hamburg, Bundesstrasse 55, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
- 4London Mathematical Laboratory, 8 Margravine Gardens London, W6 8RH, UK
Cold and snowy spells are compound extreme events with the potential of causing high socioeconomic impacts. Gaining insight on their dynamics in climate change scenarios could help anticipating the need for adaptation efforts. We focus on winter cold and snowy spells over Italy, reconstructing 32 major events in the past 60 years from documentary sources. Despite warmer winter temperatures, very recent cold spells have been associated to abundant, and sometimes exceptional snowfall.
Our goal is to analyse the dynamical weather patterns associated to these events, and understand whether those patterns would be more or less recurrent in different emission scenarios using an intermediate complexity model (PlaSim). Our results, obtained by considering RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 end-of-century CO2 concentrations, suggest that the likelihood of analogous synoptic configurations of these extreme cold spells would grow substantially under increased emissions.
This work was supported by the ANR-TERC grant BOREAS and by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme XAIDA (grant agreement No 101003469)
How to cite: Pons, F., D’Errico, M., Yiou, P., Tao, S., Nardini, C., Lunkeit, F., and Faranda, D.: Present and future synoptic circulation patterns associated with cold and snowy spells over Italy, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-5511, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-5511, 2022.
