The European Research Council grants 1.5 M Euro to Gabriel Messori´s climate reasearch

2020-09-03

Today the European Research Council announced the recipients of their grants and Gabriele Messori will receive a starting grant of 1.5 M euro for his project "Compound Climate Extremes in North America and Europe: from dynamics to predictability".  

storm at a beach


Conratulations Gabriele! Does the project invoilve field work? 
- The project has no field component. We will conduct both theoretical studies on the physical processes underlying extreme event occurrences and more applied work on extreme event predictability, but always from the comfort of an office chair. A few decades ago it would not have been possible to achieve this without going out in the field, but thanks to today’s remotely-sensed data and large climate databases on the internet, there is a lot that can be done even if one does not collect new data. At the same time, this certainly does not mean that fieldwork is no longer necessary.

When do you start?
- I plan to start the project in January next year (2021), and will soon start hiring Ph. D.s and Post-Doctoral researcher.

How many peopel will work in the project? 
The idea is to hire two Ph. D. students and 3 or 4 post-docs, but clearly not all in one go!

How long is the project?
The project will last for 5 years.

Read more on the ERC web. 

Facts

Projekt: Compound Climate Extremes in North America and Europe: from dynamics to predictability (CENÆ)
Ansvarig forskare: Gabriele Messori
Institution: Institutionen för geovetenskaper, Uppsala universitet
ERC Funding: ERC-2020-STG
Summary:
Different climate extremes, such as heavy rains and strong winds, can interact and result in compound extremes with a larger socio-economic impact than the sum of their individual components. Picture strong winds ripping the roof off your house while heavy precipitation floods it: the damage will be larger than if the two happened separately, allowing to mend the roof before the rain hit. Similarly, a landowner whose crops in the north of the country are damaged by frost while his farms further south face flooding, will take a heavier hit than if the two events happened years apart.  Elucidating the nature of these compound extremes is a societally relevant goal. However, it is not easily realised from a scientific standpoint.

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Last modified: 2022-09-30
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