The relevance of air-sea interactions on climate variability and climate change at large scale is widely documented; however, little is known on the impact those interactions on the regional climate, especially over coastal areas. Convection-permitting models (CPMs) are km-scale atmospheric model that explicitly represent deep convection without the need for a convective parameterization, which is a known source of model error and uncertainties in regional climate models (RCMs). It has been showed that CPMs provide a more realistic representation of local processes thus improving, among the others, the inland advection of showers coming from the sea and the sub-daily precipitation statistics and extremes. This leads to a greater confidence in their projections of future changes. However, CPMs are often not coupled with the ocean models and use sea surface temperature (SST) as boundary conditions at much lower spatial resolutions than the RCMs or CPMs grid mesh. The Mediterranean Sea is often referred to as an ocean in miniature due to the variety of processes occurring therein. These include strong air-sea interactions, active mesoscale and sub-mesoscale dynamics and a permanent thermohaline overturning circulation. Moreover, this area is very well covered by both observational network of meteorological stations and regular oceanographic campaigns providing observations of the ocean-atmosphere coupled system. Ocean mesoscale in the Mediterranean Sea is characterized by a Rossby deformation radius of 5-10 km. In consequence, the SST often shows narrow and sharp fronts with associated strong temperature gradients that can significantly modify the air-sea interaction and affect the climate evolution. Ocean mesoscale also plays a crucial role in the main mechanism of heat uptake by the ocean, namely dense water formation, which modelling requires both atmospheric and oceanic high spatial resolution.This research aims to investigate the added-values of a more realistic air-sea interaction on the regional climate especially along the coastal areas of the Mediterranean Sea at sub-daily scale. Particular emphasis will be pose at the impact of the resolution of the ocean and atmospheric component in the coupled model. Comparison can be done with uncoupled model and validated with observational dataset. The study will be conducted in collaboration with the Climate Modelling Laboratory of ENEA, that already developed and uses the regional couple model WRF-NEMO. The selected candidate will need to increase the resolution of the atmospheric component of the coupled model to reach to convection-permitting scale and test the ocean-atmosphere coupling strength with sensitivity tests. The selected PhD student will be based in Rome but expected to travel to Pavia when required.

The ideal candidate should have experience with the FORTRAN language and be familiar with atmospheric or/and ocean modelling. Knowledge of the climate physics, statistical analysis, large climate dataset will be beneficial.

The selected candidate will join the research centre on Climate change impAct studies for RISk MAnagement (CARISMA) within IUSS, Pavia. The CARISMA team is composed by STEM and Social scientists working in the prism of climate change on: data analysis and modelling of Earth system and economic system processes; impact assessment of extreme natural events and anthropogenic activities on human and natural environments; risk management of natural and anthropogenic hazards; formulation and proposal of new economic, political and legal models of sustainable development. The research activity will be based at the Climate Modelling and Impact Laboratory of the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) at the Casaccia Research Centre (Rome). The primary mission of the Laboratory is to study and model the climate system for projecting the impacts of climate variability and future scenarios on society and natural resources at spatial scales most relevant to humans, ecosystems and the national productively system. The numerical models developed and applied in the Laboratory are of different complexity and realism spanning from global models to high resolution regional climate models mainly focused on the Euro-Mediterranean area. The Laboratory promotes the development of Climate Services at both national and international level, implementing climate information transfer protocols and products for the energy, water and coastal region management, food emergency, tourism and agriculture. The laboratory is actively involved in international and national research initiatives on climate, energy and environment.