Articles | Volume 7, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-7-2229-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-7-2229-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
09 Nov 2026
Research article |
| 09 Nov 2026
| 09 Nov 2026
TurboMeter: an attribution framework for aviation turbulence events in a changing climate
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, via di Vigna Murata 605, 00143 Rome, Italy
Davide Faranda
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, UMR 8212 CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay & IPSL, CE Saclay l'Orme des Merisiers, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
London Mathematical Laboratory, 8 Margravine Gardens, London, W6 8RH, UK
LMD-IPSL, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, ENS, Université PSL, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Palaiseau, France
Mohamed Foudad
Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Whiteknights Road, Reading, UK
Erika Coppola
International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Strada Costiera 11, Trieste, Italy
Lia Rapella
LMD-IPSL, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, ENS, Université PSL, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Palaiseau, France
Rachel Burbidge
Department of Natural Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
EUROCONTROL, Brussels, Belgium
Miguel A. C. Teixeira
IDMEC, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
Paul D. Williams
Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Whiteknights Road, Reading, UK
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Davide Faranda, Lucas Taligrot, Pascal Yiou, and Nada Caud
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Observing System) program to assess the impact of the North Atlantic Oscillation, El Nino-Southern Oscillation, Quasi-Biennial Oscillation and solar cycle. We show that they drive changes to one-way flight times of over an hour and to round-trip flight times by several minutes per flight. They thus cause variability in total CO2 emissions of 10s of kT/month and financial cost of millions of US dollars/month over the full transatlantic fleet.
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Pradeebane Vaittinada Ayar, Stella Bourdin, Davide Faranda, and Mathieu Vrac
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Tracking tropical cyclones (TCs) remains a matter of interest for investigating observed and simulated tropical cyclones. In this study, Random Forest (RF), a machine learning approach, is considered to track TCs. RF associates the TC occurrence or absence with different atmospheric configurations. Compared to trackers found in the literature, it shows similar performance for tracking TCs, better control over false alarms, more flexibility, and reveals key variables for TCs' detection.
Lia Rapella, Tommaso Alberti, Davide Faranda, and Philippe Drobinski
Weather Clim. Dynam., 6, 1339–1363, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-1339-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-1339-2025, 2025
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Extreme weather events pose increasing challenges for aviation, including flight disruptions and infrastructure damage. This study examines the influence of anthropogenic climate change on four recent major storms across Europe, the USA, and East Asia. Our research underscores the growing intensity of extreme storms, driven by human-induced climate change, stressing the need to adapt aviation strategies to an increasingly hazardous environment.
Kerry Emanuel, Tommaso Alberti, Stella Bourdin, Suzana J. Camargo, Davide Faranda, Emmanouil Flaounas, Juan Jesus Gonzalez-Aleman, Chia-Ying Lee, Mario Marcello Miglietta, Claudia Pasquero, Alice Portal, Hamish Ramsay, Marco Reale, and Romualdo Romero
Weather Clim. Dynam., 6, 901–926, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-901-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-901-2025, 2025
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Storms strongly resembling hurricanes are sometimes observed to form well outside the tropics, even in polar latitudes. They behave capriciously, developing very rapidly and then dying just as quickly. We show that strong dynamical processes in the atmosphere can sometimes cause it to become much colder locally than the underlying ocean, creating the conditions for hurricanes to form but only over small areas and for short times. We call the resulting storms "CYCLOPs".
James M. Ciarlo', Monique Borg Inguanez, Erika Coppola, Aaron Micallef, and David Mifsud
Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 1391–1407, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1391-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1391-2025, 2025
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Climate change threatens biodiversity, especially that of arthropods, by altering species' habitats and ecological roles. This study presents a proof of concept for a novel index that models species distributions based on climatic niches, using regional climate model data and focusing on Mediterranean arthropods. The index enables quick assessments of species' climate resilience and offers potential applications for projecting ecological impacts of future climate changes.
Robin Noyelle, Davide Faranda, Yoann Robin, Mathieu Vrac, and Pascal Yiou
Weather Clim. Dynam., 6, 817–839, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-817-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-817-2025, 2025
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Properties of extreme meteorological and climatological events are changing under human-caused climate change. Extreme event attribution methods seek to estimate the contribution of global warming in the probability and intensity changes of extreme events. Here we propose a procedure to estimate these quantities for the flow analogue method, which compares the observed event to similar events in the past.
Ferran Lopez-Marti, Mireia Ginesta, Davide Faranda, Anna Rutgersson, Pascal Yiou, Lichuan Wu, and Gabriele Messori
Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 169–187, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-169-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-169-2025, 2025
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Explosive cyclones and atmospheric rivers are two main drivers of extreme weather in Europe. In this study, we investigate their joint changes in future climates over the North Atlantic. Our results show that both the concurrence of these events and the intensity of atmospheric rivers increase by the end of the century across different future scenarios. Furthermore, explosive cyclones associated with atmospheric rivers last longer and are deeper than those without atmospheric rivers.
Davide Faranda, Gabriele Messori, Erika Coppola, Tommaso Alberti, Mathieu Vrac, Flavio Pons, Pascal Yiou, Marion Saint Lu, Andreia N. S. Hisi, Patrick Brockmann, Stavros Dafis, Gianmarco Mengaldo, and Robert Vautard
Weather Clim. Dynam., 5, 959–983, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-5-959-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-5-959-2024, 2024
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We introduce ClimaMeter, a tool offering real-time insights into extreme-weather events. Our tool unveils how climate change and natural variability affect these events, affecting communities worldwide. Our research equips policymakers and the public with essential knowledge, fostering informed decisions and enhancing climate resilience. We analysed two distinct events, showcasing ClimaMeter's global relevance.
Vera Melinda Galfi, Tommaso Alberti, Lesley De Cruz, Christian L. E. Franzke, and Valerio Lembo
Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 31, 185–193, https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-31-185-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-31-185-2024, 2024
Short summary
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Lucas Fery and Davide Faranda
Weather Clim. Dynam., 5, 439–461, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-5-439-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-5-439-2024, 2024
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In this study, we analyse warm-season derechos – a type of severe convective windstorm – in France between 2000 and 2022, identifying 38 events. We compare their frequency and features with other countries. We also examine changes in the associated large-scale patterns. We find that convective instability has increased in southern Europe. However, the attribution of these changes to natural climate variability, human-induced climate change or a combination of both remains unclear.
Susanna Strada, Andrea Pozzer, Graziano Giuliani, Erika Coppola, Fabien Solmon, Xiaoyan Jiang, Alex Guenther, Efstratios Bourtsoukidis, Dominique Serça, Jonathan Williams, and Filippo Giorgi
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 13301–13327, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-13301-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-13301-2023, 2023
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Water deficit modifies emissions of isoprene, an aromatic compound released by plants that influences the production of an air pollutant such as ozone. Numerical modelling shows that, during the warmest and driest summers, isoprene decreases between −20 and −60 % over the Euro-Mediterranean region, while near-surface ozone only diminishes by a few percent. Decreases in isoprene emissions not only happen under dry conditions, but also could occur after prolonged or repeated water deficits.
Emma Holmberg, Gabriele Messori, Rodrigo Caballero, and Davide Faranda
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 737–765, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-737-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-737-2023, 2023
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We analyse the duration of large-scale patterns of air movement in the atmosphere, referred to as persistence, and whether unusually persistent patterns favour warm-temperature extremes in Europe. We see no clear relationship between summertime heatwaves and unusually persistent patterns. This suggests that heatwaves do not necessarily require the continued flow of warm air over a region and that local effects could be important for their occurrence.
Davide Faranda, Stella Bourdin, Mireia Ginesta, Meriem Krouma, Robin Noyelle, Flavio Pons, Pascal Yiou, and Gabriele Messori
Weather Clim. Dynam., 3, 1311–1340, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-1311-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-1311-2022, 2022
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We analyze the atmospheric circulation leading to impactful extreme events for the calendar year 2021 such as the Storm Filomena, Westphalia floods, Hurricane Ida and Medicane Apollo. For some of the events, we find that climate change has contributed to their occurrence or enhanced their intensity; for other events, we find that they are unprecedented. Our approach underscores the importance of considering changes in the atmospheric circulation when performing attribution studies.
Flavio Maria Emanuele Pons and Davide Faranda
Adv. Stat. Clim. Meteorol. Oceanogr., 8, 155–186, https://doi.org/10.5194/ascmo-8-155-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/ascmo-8-155-2022, 2022
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The objective motivating this study is the assessment of the impacts of winter climate extremes, which requires accurate simulation of snowfall. However, climate simulation models contain physical approximations, which result in biases that must be corrected using past data as a reference. We show how to exploit simulated temperature and precipitation to estimate snowfall from already bias-corrected variables, without requiring the elaboration of complex, multivariate bias adjustment techniques.
Miriam D'Errico, Flavio Pons, Pascal Yiou, Soulivanh Tao, Cesare Nardini, Frank Lunkeit, and Davide Faranda
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 961–992, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-961-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-961-2022, 2022
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Climate change is already affecting weather extremes. In a warming climate, we will expect the cold spells to decrease in frequency and intensity. Our analysis shows that the frequency of circulation patterns leading to snowy cold-spell events over Italy will not decrease under business-as-usual emission scenarios, although the associated events may not lead to cold conditions in the warmer scenarios.
Bérengère Dubrulle, François Daviaud, Davide Faranda, Louis Marié, and Brice Saint-Michel
Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 29, 17–35, https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-29-17-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-29-17-2022, 2022
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Present climate models discuss climate change but show no sign of bifurcation in the future. Is this because there is none or because they are in essence too simplified to be able to capture them? To get elements of an answer, we ran a laboratory experiment and discovered that the answer is not so simple.
Erika Coppola, Paolo Stocchi, Emanuela Pichelli, Jose Abraham Torres Alavez, Russell Glazer, Graziano Giuliani, Fabio Di Sante, Rita Nogherotto, and Filippo Giorgi
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 7705–7723, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-7705-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-7705-2021, 2021
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In this work we describe the development of a non-hydrostatic version of the regional climate model RegCM4-NH, implemented to allow simulations at convection-permitting scales of <4 km for climate applications. The new core is described, and three case studies of intense convection are carried out to illustrate the model performances. Comparison with observations is much improved with respect to with coarse grid runs. RegCM4-NH offers a promising tool for climate investigations at a local scale.
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Short summary
We developed TurboMeter to study whether climate change is making aviation turbulence stronger. By comparing current atmospheric conditions with similar past situations, we find that most turbulence events in 2024 were intensified by human-caused climate change, especially over the North Atlantic, East Asia, and the United States. This work shows that climate change is already affecting flight safety and highlights the need for climate-informed planning in aviation.
We developed TurboMeter to study whether climate change is making aviation turbulence stronger....
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