In recent decades, we humans have strongly influenced the behaviour of climate given the enormous amounts of “heat-trapping” gasses that we have emitted since the beginning of the industrial revolution. These greenhouse gasses have generated an increase in the Earth’s temperature and this has had an implication for the climate as we once knew it. More extreme meteorological events have become more common and they are expected to continue to affect us more strongly in the future. Why are these extreme events increasing and what causes them in the first place?

The CAFE EU-funded project focuses on improving the prediction of extreme weather in the sub-seasonal range (2 weeks to 2 months). At this time range, including long lasting and far reaching processes is paramount to understand the drivers of meteorological phenomena and improve their prediction. My research within the CAFE project focuses on the prediction of heatwaves over Europe. In this short blog, I will be exploring the potential impact of the tropics on European heatwaves.

The new feature of xMCA, is the possibility to perform complex PCA and complex MCA, which are particularly suitable, when the covariance-describing patterns do not rest statically in space, but rather behave like a cyclic wave propagating in space.

Climate change is here today, affecting us and impacting our lives. “But unless there is an immediate, rapid and large-scale reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to +1.5°C by 2100 would be out of reach” assures Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a Climate scientist at the Laboratoire des sciences du climat et de l’environnement (LSCE). To better react, it is worth having an overview of the actual evolution of climate change.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics recognized that our knowledge of Earth’s Climate, one outstanding example of a complex system, rests on a solid scientific foundation of physics, mathematics and complex systems science.