I - 34151 Trieste Italy
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The Earth System Physics (ESP) section studies a wide spectrum of the Earth system, from its fluid components (oceans and the atmosphere) to the planet's interior. The ESP section maintains a range of models and datasets and coordinates the Regional Climate research NETwork (RegCNET), encompassing over 600 participants worldwide.
12 Dec 2017
Climate, Land, Energy, and Water Strategies Interlinked
9 Aug 2017
Where do medallists come from; what are their fields of expertise?
9 Dec 2016
ICTP scientist develops open-source model to predict outbreaks
Europe/Rome 2018-04-23 08:00:00 2018-04-27 22:00:00 Integrated Environmental Health Impact Assessment (IEHIA) of Air Pollution and Climate Change in Mediterranean Areas | (smr 3250) CONTEXT The Mediterranean is a hotspot for climate change and air pollution. Climate change will significantly impact the regional air quality by reinforcing the hot, sunny and dry Mediterranean climate. Mediterranean inhabitants are already regularly exposed to pollutant loads well above WHO (World Health Organization) air quality recommendations standards and will be further exposed. Additional exposures to air pollution and warm conditions will result in an excess of premature deaths, but we still lack quantification of the impact in southern and eastern countries. Thus, there is a need to promote and develop Integrated Health Impact assessment (IHIA) approach by empowering scientists from around the Mediterranean basin. OBJECTIVES The objective of the training school is to strengthen in-country scientists and stakeholders capacity to face the health challenges posed by environmental stressors. It aims at giving early-stage researchers a good understanding of risk and uncertainty matched to a set of practical skills in facing the environmental health issues related to evaluating the health impact of air pollution and climate change. Students will be trained to the practice of exposure assessment, epidemiology and integrated health impact assessment. CONTENTS The school will introduce state of the art knowledge on air pollution and climate change in the Mediterranean region, as well as methodologies of health impact assessment. It will give students knowledge of protocols, tools, sources of data and will make them practice on case studies specifically designed for the school in order to enable them performing air quality and climate health impact studies including economic valuation. The school will also give insights on how to identify public health priorities for research and preventive actions. The teaching will be provided by recognized experts in atmospheric chemistry, climate, epidemiology, toxicology, economics... Participants will be able to interact and communicate with all these experts. SPEAKERS Carla ANCONA (DEP Lazio, Rome, Italy) Isabella ANNESI-MAESANO (INSERM & UPMC, Paris, France) Olivier CHANEL (AMSE, Univ. Of Aix-Marseille, France) Augustin COLETTE (INERIS, Verneuil en Halatte, France) Zeina DAGHER (Univ. Lebanese, Fanar, Lebanon) Kees DE HOOGH (Univ. Of Basel, Basel, Switzerland) Jos LELIEVELD (Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany) Konstantinos MAKRIS (Cyprus International Institute for Environmental and Public Health, Limassol, Cyprus) and to be announced ICTP ICTP pio@ictp.it 23 Apr 2018 - 27 Apr 2018
» Integrated Environmental Health Impact Assessment (IEHIA) of Air Pollution and Climate Change in Mediterranean Areas | (smr 3250)
Europe/Rome 2018-05-28 08:00:00 2018-06-08 22:00:00 Ninth ICTP Workshop on the Theory and Use of Regional Climate Models | (smr 3208) The ICTP regional climate modeling system RegCM4 is currently participating to the CORDEX-CORE initiative, which entails the completion of a new set of downscaled climate projections over most CORDEX domains for two greenhouse gas concentration scenarios (RCP8.5 and RCP2.6) at a horizontal grid spacing of 25 km. These projections are being completed at ICTP as well as other laboratories using the RegCM4 model, as a community effort aimed at producing climate information usable for impact assessment studies and contributing to the activities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is expected that by the date of the workshop a number of new projections will have been completed for multiple domains, and therefore the workshop will be an optimal venue to analyze these projections and exchange experience across different domains and regions. As in previous workshops of this series, this event will provide lectures and extensive hands-on sessions on the theory of regional climate change and regional climate modeling as well as the use of the RegCM modeling system. The focus of the present workshop will be on the analysis and interpretation of the output of regional model projections, addressing issues such as : assessment of model performance, performance metrics a and model systematic errors, identification and quantification of added value, study of phenomena relevant to different regions, uncertainty in projections and their dependence on model biases. The workshop will also provide a forum to discuss the production of scientific publications by the RegCM user community participating to the CORDEX-CORE effort, particularly in view of relevant IPCC deadlines. Experience with the RegCM modeling system and with the analysis of regional model output is an important requirement for participation. The workshop is intended for scientists and graduate students working in the areas of Atmospheric Physics and Dynamics, Climatology, Oceanography, Physics and Mathematics. ICTP ICTP pio@ictp.it 28 May 2018 - 8 Jun 2018
» Ninth ICTP Workshop on the Theory and Use of Regional Climate Models | (smr 3208)
Europe/Rome 2018-06-04 08:00:00 2018-06-29 22:00:00 The Summer School on Modelling Tools for Sustainable Development - OpTIMUS | (smr 3210) The Summer School on Modelling Tools for Sustainable development will provide training on selected open modelling tools for sustainable development pathways. The Summer School involves four weeks of intensive training for government officials from countries participating in, amongst others, UNDESA, UNDP, World Bank Group and related capacity development projects on modelling tools. It will also engage academics and researchers working in the field of sustainable development whose institutions will become regional centres of excellence. (As one of several entry points) analysts will be exposed to geospatial electricity access (using the OnSSET.org tool) as well as medium to long term energy investment modelling (using the OSeMOSYS.org tool). Participants will then extend this to include integrated Climate-, Land-, Energy- and Water- system (CLEWs) modelling. The latter will investigate the benefits of resource policy coherence. During the first week of training steering committee meetings of experts dedicated to the development those tools will also be held (in parallel to the training). The same experts will be involved introductory presentations. The RGCM and SPEEDY climate models of the ICTP will also be introduced in the first week. During the second to the third week participants will deepen their modelling skills so that they can operate and enhance their national models independently, incorporate new and evolving policy issues and contribute to the practice of providing rigorous evidence for decision making on national sustainable development policies. In the fourth week, presentations (by participants) will be made to high level policy makers. This will be followed by a one day high level policy discussion. The workshop will culminate with an exercise by trainers, trainees, academics, funders and others to enhance the efficacy of global capacity building for sustainability. Participation in the event will be primarily by invitation only. However, limited spaces are available for self-funded participants. The self-funded applicants are limited to academics, researchers and graduate students working on related fields, preferably working in (or with developing countries). The self-funded participants must be from a university that plans to implement teaching activities using OSeMOSYS.org, OnSSET.org or OSiMOSYS.org. A letter of commitment should be obtained from the appropriate person responsible - and submitted with the application. (Note that all teaching material from the course, can be used for the course. There are online discussion fora. Also, note that all software is free and open source.) Applications will be evaluated by the selection committee based on the following criteria: i) Relevance of their academic background to the research field(s) of the Summer School, ii) Excellent language skills iii) Clear potential and ambition to contribute to the adoption of related teaching and training in developing country institutions. The program is open for applications from all countries. Visa support may be provided. Self-funded will be required to bring their own laptops with windows 10 installed and full administrator rights. ICTP ICTP pio@ictp.it 4 Jun 2018 - 29 Jun 2018
» The Summer School on Modelling Tools for Sustainable Development - OpTIMUS | (smr 3210)
Europe/Rome 2018-06-25 08:00:00 2018-07-05 22:00:00 ICTP Summer School on Theory, Mechanisms and Hierarchical Modelling of Climate Dynamics: Multiple Equilibria in the Climate System | (smr 3214) The climate community is still faced with large uncertainties in estimating possible climate changes in the next decades and quantifying the relative role of anthropogenic contribution to climate change. Although most modern climate models are able to reproduce reasonably well global climatologies and patterns of interannual variations, they still struggle with pervasive biases and the representation of some of the climate phenomena involving the interaction and coupling between the atmosphere, the ocean and the cryosphere. The problem is compounded by the limited understanding of some of the physical mechanisms giving rise to both our present mean climate and its natural variability at different time scales. One possible way forward is the use of a hierarchy of models to tackle the most pressing questions in climate dynamics and modeling. Key among them, is whether the climate is stable, or whether internal feedbacks could lead to tipping points, abrupt changes, and transitions to fundamentally different equilibria. Changes in the oceanic overturning, ice-albedo effects, land-surface and vegetation coupling to the atmosphere, and radiative-convective properties of the atmosphere have all been suggested as possible causes of instability in the climate system. Advances in our understanding, quantification, and modelling of these processes are necessary both for the interpretation of the paleoclimate record and for the projection of possible future climate states. A variety of studies have found that multiple equilibria exist both in highly idealized and more comprehensive models of the climate system. Whether multiple equilibria do exist in state-of-the-art climate models is still a subject of controversy. A fundamental understanding of key processes within a hierarchical modeling framework will eventually translate into a better representation and simulation within state-of-the-art climate models, as it brings new insights for process-based evaluation of climate model reliability and fit for purpose. The use of hierarchies additionally promotes the use of standardized performance metrics and highlights instances when post-processing approaches (e.g. bias correction) or diverse model tuning practices should be explored. The school will be based on lectures on theoretical aspects of atmosphere, ocean and climate dynamics, with a focus on the present state of established knowledge and relevant mechanisms. The topic of the school, Multiple Equilibra in the Climate System, will be the subject of afternoon lectures, giving an overview of the most recent progress and hypotheses suggesting the existence of multiple equilibrium states, and consequences for past and future climates. Afternoons will also be devoted to practical sessions, involving the use of simplified climate models and analysis of relevant data sets. The school will be followed by the workshop WCRP Grand Challenge on Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity: 2nd Meeting on Monsoons and Tropical Rain Belts , SMR3252, 2 - 5 July 2018, go to link http://indico.ictp.it/event/8457/ Confirmed speakers: Simona Bordoni, CalTech, USA David Ferreira, Reading U., UK In-Sik Kang, SNU, Republic of Korea John Marshall, MIT, USA Franco Molteni, ECMWF, UK Brian Rose, U. Albany, USA Stephen Thomson, U. exeter, UK Adrian M. Tompkins, ICTP, Italy Geoff K. Vallis, U. Exeter, UK Shang-Ping Xie, SCRIPPS, USA ATTENTION: APPLICATION HERE IS FOR BOTH SCHOOL AND WORKSHOP, DEADLINE 1 MARCH 2018 SHOULD YOU WISH TO APPLY TO THE WORKSHOP ONLY, PLEASE VISIT THE RELEVANT PAGE http://indico.ictp.it/event/8457/ AND APPLY THERE ICTP ICTP pio@ictp.it 25 Jun 2018 - 5 Jul 2018
» ICTP Summer School on Theory, Mechanisms and Hierarchical Modelling of Climate Dynamics: Multiple Equilibria in the Climate System | (smr 3214)
Earth system models attempt to represent the key processes that determine the climate of our planet, such as the atmospheric and ocean circulations, aerosols and atmospheric chemistry, biogeochemical cycles, the cryosphere, and land surface processes. The research of the group uses model tools such as the latest generation of the regional climate model REGCM and intermediate complexity global model SPEEDY to understand our climate, its natural variability and its response to anthropogenic forcings.
Climate extremes in the present day and in future decades can have severe implications, with the poorest members of societies being often the most vulnerable. The ESP group uses dynamical and statistical modelling techniques to assess the socio-economic impacts of climate
variability and change, for example on energy, water and health. As with the climate models, the dynamical impact models CHYM and VECTRI are made available to the wider scientific community through regular workshops and training events.