*The colloquium will be in English, the event is open to the public, light refreshments will be served after the talk

Abstract

Damage from flooding in the winter and fall seasons caused by extreme precipitation events (EPE) has been widespread in the Mediterranean Region (MR) over recent decades. The issue has been targeted by a number of international research efforts. Here we show that the studies performed demonstrate a clear trend in the understanding of an important role of anomalously intense transports of moist air from the tropical and subtropical Atlantic and Indian Oceans in the occurrence of EPEs in the MR. EPEs in the MR are directly or indirectly connected to narrow bands with high concentration of moisture in the lower troposphere, i.e., Atmospheric Rivers (ARs), narrow ribbons along which a large flux of moisture is transported from the subtropics to the mid-latitudes. Whereas in a significant fraction of the EPEs in the western MR moisture is directly transported to the MR from the tropical Atlantic, EPEs in the central, and especially the eastern MR, are more often associated with intense tropical moisture transports over North Africa and the Red Sea. The moist air for the EPEs in the latter part of the MR also mainly originates from the tropical Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and in many cases it serves as a temporary moisture reservoir for future developments of EPEs. Results of recent evaluations also demonstrate a possible role of declining Arctic sea ice in the climatology of intense precipitation in the MR. Further coordinated research of the physical mechanisms that determine the exports of tropical and subtropical moisture to the MR and Europe appears persistently critical for understanding extreme climate events of the past and assessing the risk of future flooding over the region.

About the speaker

Simon O. Krichak is an Emeritus Associate Professor in Meteorology and Climatology at the Department of Geosciences, Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. He holds M.S. degree (1966) from the Hydrometeorological University, St. Petersburg, Russia; Ph.D. (1972), and Doctor of Sciences (2012) degrees from the Hydrometeorological Research Centre of Russia, Moscow, Russia. His areas of expertise include limited area atmospheric modeling for the weather, mineral dust, and climate prediction; regional climate modeling; effects of tropical moisture exports and atmospheric rivers in extreme events in the Mediterranean region and Europe; and the Indian monsoon studies.

Since 1972, Krichak has been playing leading active roles in (1973-1984) - scientific cooperation between the USSR and India in the investigations of the Indian monsoon (MONEX, Monsoon 1977, Monsoon-79); (1998-2003) - US-Israel Mediterranean Dust Experiment MEIDEX with the first Israeli astronaut; (2000-2010) - Mediterranean Experiment on Extreme Impact Cyclones (MEDEX); (2003-2014) - Mediterranean Climate Variability project (MedClivar); (2001-2011) - International (Germany-Israel-Palestine-Jordan) research project Glowa Jordan River. S.O. Krichak has also served as a Principal Investigator in a number of bi-national (US-Israel) and national research projects in the USSR and Israel. During 2010-2012 he has been serving as the Representative of the Israel Meteorological Society at the European Meteorological Society. In 2011-2014 Simon Krichak has served as a Management Committee Member of the European Science Foundation COST ES0905 Core Group on Theoretical Studies of the Convection Parameterization Problem.