Title: Large-scale climate variability and its connection to extreme precipitation events in South-west europe

Dry periods and extreme precipitation events attach great importance for nature, humans and economy in south-west europe. Within this project the physical background of these extreme precipitation events and the economic circumstances of this region would be analysed. The basically physical effekt on the large-scale pattern is the North-Atlantic-Oscillation (NAO), which takes extra tropical cyclones loaded with huge rain potential. So the NAO and subsequent meteorological parameters like moisture transport, u/v-wind, potential vorticity, CAPE ... would be analysed related to precipitaion anomalies.

In the economic part it is neccessary to get better basic data file of the region, i.e. agriculture and forestry, water managment, electric power supply and tourism. today and future scenarios / developments  have to be integrated in the project.

These basic data file should be analysed under statistical point of view and it would be preferable to get predictors for quantification the precipitation variablitity. The research project is a cooperation with the university of Evora, Portugal.

Contact persons:

Prof. Dr. Uwe Ulbrich
Dr. Gregor Leckebusch