Geo-Hydrological Extreme Events in the Mediterranean and Black Sea Areas

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Meteorology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2021) | Viewed by 6926

Special Issue Editors

Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection IRPI, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 00185 Rome, Italy
Interests: flood; flash flood; shallow landslides; spatial and temporal cluster analysis; fractal and chaos; natural hazards; remote sensing; climate change
CESI SpA, Raffaele Rubattino, 54, 20134 Milano, Italy
Interests: lightning physics; lightning detection systems; lightning and thunderstorm hazards; extreme meteorological events

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is dedicated to the geo-hydrological severe events that frequently hit the Mediterranean and Black Sea Areas, particularly the coastlines and hinterland of western Italy and southern France, including Sardinia and Corse. From the year 2000, many intense rain events have hit the area, causing large damages and casualties: precipitation peak intensity reached the maximum of about 180 mm/h in the Genoa Metropolitan area (I) in 2011, but very high intensities have been recorded during several other events both in Italy and in France.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to focus on both the geo-hydrological hazard associated to extreme events and on the meteorological configuration that originates them, including the monitoring techniques. Both flood/flash flood and diffuse shallow landslides are triggered by heavy rains and cause devastating effects, often involving urban/peri-urban areas and infrastructures: any contribution in these areas of research is welcome, together with studies concerning the atmospheric processes responsible for the triggering mechanisms and other extreme events such as supercell thunderstorms, windstorms, and downbursts.

Additionally, the climatologic perspective is encouraged, as climate change consequences in the Mediterranean area are predicted to affect human activities and the environment with an increase in both intensity and frequency of severe events.

Dr. Guido Paliaga
Dr. Antonio Parodi
Dr. Marina Bernardi
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • geo-hydrological hazard
  • flash flood
  • shallow landslides
  • deep convection
  • supercell
  • numerical modeling
  • downburst

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

32 pages, 12069 KiB  
Article
Geo-Hydrological Events and Temporal Trends in CAPE and TCWV over the Main Cities Facing the Mediterranean Sea in the Period 1979–2018
by Guido Paliaga and Antonio Parodi
Atmosphere 2022, 13(1), 89; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/atmos13010089 - 06 Jan 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1867
Abstract
The Mediterranean region is regarded as the meeting point between Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Due to favourable climatic conditions, many civilizations have flourished here. Approximately, about half a billion people live in the Mediterranean region, which provides a key passage for [...] Read more.
The Mediterranean region is regarded as the meeting point between Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Due to favourable climatic conditions, many civilizations have flourished here. Approximately, about half a billion people live in the Mediterranean region, which provides a key passage for trading between Europe and Asia. Belonging to the middle latitude zone, this region experiences high meteorological variability that is mostly induced by contrasting hot and cold air masses that generally come from the west. Due to such phenomenon, this region is subject to frequent intensive precipitation events. Besides, in this complex physiographic and orographic region, human activities have contributed to enhance the geo-hydrologic risk. Further, in terms of climate change, the Mediterranean is a hot spot, probably exposing it to future damaging events. In this framework, this research focuses on the analysis of precipitation related events recorded in the EM–DAT disasters database for the period 1979–2018. An increasing trend emerges in both event records and related deaths. Then a possible linkage with two meteorological variables was investigated. Significant trends were studied for CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) and TCWV (Total Column Water Vapor) data, as monthly means in 100 km2 cells for 18 major cities facing the Mediterranean Sea. The Mann–Kendall trend test, Sen’s slope estimation and the Hurst exponent estimation for the investigation of persistency in time series were applied. The research provides new evidence and quantification for the increasing trend of climate related disasters at the Mediterranean scale: recorded events in 1999–2018 are about four times the ones in 1979–1998. Besides, it relates this rise with the trend of two meteorological variables associated with high intensity precipitation events, which shows a statistically significative increasing trend in many of the analysed cities facing the Mediterranean Sea. Full article
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29 pages, 10275 KiB  
Article
Rainfall Threshold for Shallow Landslides Initiation and Analysis of Long-Term Rainfall Trends in a Mediterranean Area
by Anna Roccati, Guido Paliaga, Fabio Luino, Francesco Faccini and Laura Turconi
Atmosphere 2020, 11(12), 1367; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/atmos11121367 - 17 Dec 2020
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 3816
Abstract
The effects of climate change on landslide activity may have important environmental, socio-economic, and political consequences. In the last decades, several short-term extreme rainfall events affected Mediterranean regions, resulted in damaging geo-hydrological processes and casualties. It is unequivocal that the impact of landslides [...] Read more.
The effects of climate change on landslide activity may have important environmental, socio-economic, and political consequences. In the last decades, several short-term extreme rainfall events affected Mediterranean regions, resulted in damaging geo-hydrological processes and casualties. It is unequivocal that the impact of landslides in several Mediterranean countries is increasing with time, but until now, there has been little or no quantitative data to support these increases. In this paper, both rainfall conditions for the occurrence of shallow landslides and rainfall trends were investigated in the Portofino promontory, which extends in the Ligurian Sea, where heavy rainfall and related ground effects often occur. Adopting a frequentist approach, the empirical intensity-duration threshold was estimated. Our findings highlight that the rainfall intensity required to trigger landslides is lower for the same duration than those expected in other similar environments, suggesting a high susceptibility to rainfall-induced landslides in the Portofino territory. Further, the Mann-Kendall test and Hurst exponent were used for detecting potential trends. Analysis of long-term rainfall time series showed statistically significant increasing trends in short duration precipitation occurrence and rainfall rates, suggesting a possible future scenario with a more frequent exceedance of the threshold triggering value and an increase of landslide risk. Full article
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