Special Geosciences Dept. Seminar: Meteodiversity: a new concept to define and quantify the diversity in weather

Abstract:

Inspired by the concept of biodiversity used by biologists and ecologists, the concept of meteodiversity is proposed for characterizing the variety of meteorological phenomena in a defined area within a specified period. Similarly to the term biodiversity, meteodiversity takes into account the proportion of individual meteorological phenomena belonging to the main type of phenomena that occur in a defined area. For quantification purposes, we propose a meteodiversity index, which, in addition to events and phenomena, should include a large number of atmospheric variables obtained from instrumental and observational records.  

We use climatic data obtained from the European Climate Assessment and Dataset project to evaluate the meteodiversity index since 1950 in several cities of Europe. The benefits and utilities for using this new term will be discussed in the talk, as well as the challenges for spread out the usage of this index among the scientific community.

Seminar Organizer: Prof. Eyal Haifetz