E' stato messo a punto presso l'ISAC, nell'ambito di un'Intesa Operativa con il Dipartimento della Protezione Civile, un sistema di previsioni mensili probabilistiche (extended range ensemble forecasting), basato sull'utilizzo del modello globale GLOBO, sviluppato presso l'Istituto. Il modello GLOBO è stato perfezionato mediante implementazione di uno schema di mixed layer oceanico e di evoluzione della copertura dei ghiacci marini, oltre che di una parametrizzazione del drag orografico. Sono ...

The atmospheric pollution forecast is a challenging target, which is not far to be reached by the scientific tools developed in the last years. The research objective is to better understand the processes that affect the air quality and their impact on meteorology and climate; the practical objective is to produce tools for the governance and support to decisions. The growing public interest solicited new European economic resources towards such end. In particular EU finances the Integrated ...

A database on climate change over the last two centuries has been realized thanks to the European project ALP-IMP (Multi-centennial climate variability in the Alps based on Instrumental data, Model simulations and Proxy data), where the group of Historical Climatology of the Institute of Atmospheric and Climatic Sciences (ISAC) of the National Research Council, Bologna, headed by Teresa Nanni, participated for Italy. Research was carried out in collaboration with Maurizio Maugeri of the ...

The negative effects of climate change are mostly observed in developing Countries, with particular emphasis on Asia. As in other parts of the world, this area is under a double threat: the first one, at a larger scale, is related to global warming as a result of increasing greenhouse gas emissions to which the Asian continent contributes significantly, while the second one is connected to climate change at the regional scale, influenced by the high aerosol - black carbon in the first place - ...

In the recent years a tremendous increase in economic, environmental and human losses caused by weather hazards, especially floods and droughts, has raised the alarm over the possibility that the recent increases in extraordinary atmospheric events were are due to a changing climate. The analyses till now performed on daily series show a positive trend in the mean amount per wet day (i.e. precipitation intensity) for some areas and a tendency toward higher frequencies of heavy and extreme ...

It is known that changes are taking place in the composition of the atmosphere and in the resulting impact of multipollutants on the environment and land. Cultural heritage is particularly vulnerable to such changes. The results of the EC-financed CARAMEL project, wound up in 2003, showed that carbonaceous particulate has now become the main damage factor on the architectural and archaeological heritage. Measurements performed in a number of European cities (Milan, Rome, Paris, London and ...

On how a turbulent system replicates itself at smaller scales. Marta Antonelli 1, Andrea Mazzino 2, Umberto Rizza 2(1) Univ. di Genova, D.to di Fis., (2) CNR-ISAC, Sez. di Lecce One of the most intriguing features characterizing a turbulent system is the emergence of huge fluctuations covering a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Although the equations ruling the dynamics of such fluctuations are fully deterministic, the probabilistic description turns out to be the most appropriate ...

Anthropogenic emissions, clouds and climate Clouds are the most important factor controlling the albedo (reflectivity) and hence the temperature of our planet. In fact, the surface of the Earth is covered by clouds 60% of the time on average, and clouds reflect the incoming solar radiation and cause cooling at the surface. Man-made aerosols have a strong influence on cloud optical properties, thus strongly affecting the albedo of the Earth. This climatic effect, called the "indirect aerosol ...