Exploring Terrestrial and Marine Heatwaves in the Mediterranean: Mechanisms, Predictability, Attribution, Risk and Impacts.
Conveners: M. Carmen Alvarez-Castro (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain), Ricardo Garcia- Herrera (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), Alfredo Reder (Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici, Italy)
Recent decades have witnessed record-shattering heat across the globe, leading to adverse outcomes for ecosystems and society. The Mediterranean region is particularly vulnerable to the escalating impacts of climate change, with an increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves (HWs) and marine heatwaves (MHWs). Understanding the dynamics and past context of these events is crucial for predicting their occurrence and devising effective mitigation strategies. Predictability, detection, and attribution studies play pivotal roles in fortifying early warning systems and guiding adaptive strategies. Furthermore, the use of machine learning is key, introducing innovative tools that enhance our understanding and prediction capabilities in the study of extreme and compound events where HWs and MHWs are involved. Potential topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Physical processes and drivers of HWs/MHW; - Methods for HWs/MHWs detection and characterization incl. machine learning;
- Compound events; - HWs/MHWs predictability and prediction studies;
- Early warning systems and forecasts;
- Projections in the future under different scenarios;
- Attribution of HW/MHW to climate change;
- Historical analyses and paleoclimate evidence to provide insights into the long-term
- variability, trends, and patterns of HWs/MHWs in the Mediterranean region;
- Interdisciplinary advances for diagnosing risk and impacts of HWs/MHWs.