INTEXseas

First INTEXseas results presented at EGU in Vienna

First INTEXseas results on ‘Defining extreme rainy seasons: methodology and insights into extremeness and persistence’ by Emmanouil Flaounas, Michael Sprenger and Heini Wernli will be presented his at EGU in Vienna as a poster presentation on Wednesday, 10 April at 14.00 in Hall X5, in the session ‘The atmospheric water cycle: processes, dynamics and characteristics’. This work proposes and illustrates an objective definition of extreme rainy seasons and evaluates in which regions extreme rainy seasons are mostly affected by extreme precipitation events on a daily scale or by unusually large numbers of precipitation days.

Start of the INTEXseas project

Start of the INTEXseas project at ETH Zürich

 

On 1 November 2018 the ERC-funded INTEXseas project officially started at the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zürich. In this project led by Prof. Dr. Heini Wernli a team of three postdocs and two doctoral students will investigate how the atmosphere generates extreme seasons in terms of temperature, wind and precipitation. Hereby, atmospheric processes that occur at the interface between meteorology and climate will be studied.

Numerous recent examples such as the European heat wave in 2003 or the extremely wet winter in 2013/2014 in the UK have revealed that extreme seasons are of great societal relevance. When pondering about future weather and climate related risks it is therefore pivotal to understand how extreme seasons of different types come about and how they might change in a future climate. However, the atmospheric driving mechanisms of extreme seasons are hitherto relatively unexplored and therefore offer great potential for cutting edge research with considerable societal relevance. Over the course of the next five years, the INTEXseas team will address this knowledge gap and work towards a better understanding of extreme seasons from a weather system perspective.