Millions of euros to interdisciplinary research around extreme weather

Gabriele Messori, Associate Professor at Department of Earth Sciences, Program for Air, Water and Landscape Sciences; Meteorology just received funding for a Marie Curie ITN project he will coordinate. The financing is unusually large and the funds will go to research on weather extremes. The project involves 9 universities and research institutes as well as additional external collaborators. The plan is to start the project in the beginning of 2021, pending completion of the Grant Agreement. Then, 14 new doctoral students will be hired, of which 3 will be based at the Department of Earth Sciences at Uppsala University.

Congratulations Gabriele! How large was the grant?

- The total amount is over 3.8 million Euro (close to 40 million SEK).

What is the purpose of the project?

EDIPI (see below) aims to help us better understand the dynamics, predictability and impacts of temperature, precipitation (including drought) and surface wind extremes over Europe. Why does a specific type of weather extreme occur? How can we use this knowledge to better predict it? And finally, what are the likely impacts once it does occur? We will try to answer these questions by combining very different disciplines, from climate science, to statistical mechanics, dynamical systems theory, risk management, agronomy, epidemiology and more.

Which universities will participate?

Uppsala University, Stockholm University, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, ETH Zürich, Institut Royal Météorologique de Belgique, Imperial College London, Barcelona Institute for Global Health and Tel Aviv University.

How will you cooperate?

- The idea is to create a closely-knit group of universities, research centres and private-sector companies hinging around a cohort of doctoral students who all work on different aspects of the same broad topic. This will include research but also educational activities, ranging from workshops to summer schools to internships, and a wide-ranging science communication effort, through both web-based and in-person activities.

When will you start?

Right now nothing definite is decided but the project is likely to start in the beginning of 2021 and will then run for four years.

For more information contact Gabriele Messori: gabriele.messori@geo.uu.se

Some information on the project EDIPI

The project is called EDIPI (European Weather Extremes: Drivers, Predictability and Impacts). It is an MSCA-ITN-ETN or, more colloquially, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network. The idea is to create a closely-knit group of universities, research centres and private-sector companies hinging around a cohort of doctoral students who all work on different aspects of the same broad topic. This will include research but also educational and science communication activities. EDIPI will be co-ordinated by myself from Uppsala University. We plan to hire 14 Ph. D. students, 3 of which in Uppsala and 11 elsewhere in Sweden and Europe. EDIPI consists of a core group of 9 universities and research centres and 11 partner organisations, including operational forecast centres and insurance and catastrophe modelling companies.

EDIPI aims to help us better understand the dynamics, predictability and impacts of temperature, precipitation (including drought) and surface wind extremes over Europe. The 14 different Ph. D. projects within EDIPI will, for example, use dynamical systems theory to understand future changes in destructive North Atlantic storms, provide improved forecasts of mortality related to temperature extremes in Europe, understand how the skill of heatwave forecasts may be affected by climate change and study vulnerability to compound hot/dry and hot/humid climate extremes.