Global Phenomena with Regional Impacts: the ICTP/CLIVAR Summer School on Marine Heatwaves
While climate change is clearly responsible for increasing the frequency of the widespread occurrence of Marine Heatwaves (MHWs), open questions remain about the internal variability that drives these extreme events. The ICTP/CLIVAR Summer School on Marine Heatwaves aims at enhancing the understanding of the mechanisms, predictability and impacts of MHWs
Marine Heatwaves (MHWs) are extreme climatic events that impact all ocean basins and can persist from weeks to months and spread over hundreds to thousands of kilometers. They have devastating impacts on marine habitats and ecosystems and influence regional weather systems and extreme weather events.
The ICTP/CLIVAR Summer School on Marine Heatwaves: Global Phenomena with Regional Impacts is taking place on 24-29 July 2023 at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy. It aims at enhancing the understanding of the mechanisms, predictability and impacts of MHWs, as well as to provide hands-on experience and tools to train the next generation of scientists, and enhance the capacity of early career scientists, especially from under-resourced countries to detect and predict MHWs.
The school will include lectures on the current state of knowledge on the topic of MHWs and practical sessions with the development of student projects and the application of analysis tools for the detection and diagnosis of extreme events in observations and climate model output.
The 6-day summer school will cover a range of topics concerning MHWs, divided into four primary themes – detection, mechanisms, impacts, and future projections. CMCC’s Simona Masina will participate in the session on Drivers of marine heatwaves: Atmospheric and oceanic mechanisms as an invited lecturer, a session aimed at discussing the current state-of-understanding of formation of MHWs in different parts of the world and identifying where there are gaps in our understanding.
The CLIVAR Research Foci on Marine Heatwaves in the Global Ocean (MHW RF) was kicked off in February 2023 with the goal to achieve a better understanding of MHWs globally. This would include detection, surface and subsurface characteristics, mechanisms, connection with climate change and biogeochemical extremes, in order to increase preparedness and promote efficient adaptation planning.
CLIVAR (Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability and Change) is one of the six core projects of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). Its mission is to understand the dynamics, the interaction, and the predictability of the climate system with emphasis on ocean-atmosphere interactions. In the future CLIVAR will critically contribute to new challenges of climate science by covering overarching topics concerning the understanding of the ocean’s role in climate variability, change, and transient sensitivity, and of regional climate phenomena that provide predictability on different time scales. Its objectives are to facilitate observations, analysis, predictions and projections of variability and changes in the Earth’s climate system, enabling better understanding of climate variability and dynamics, predictability, and change, to the benefit of society and the environment.