Biography

After completing a Ph.D. from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany in Atmospheric Sciences, I developed an interest in better understanding the mechanisms leading to weather compounds events and extreme events. At the ESA Science Hub, my research focus on a 25-year assessment of hot and dry compound events in Europe using Earth Observation. This study allows among others to highlight regions the most affected by co-occurrent and/or successive episodes of heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and dust storms.

After finalising her Research Fellowship at ESA, Dr. Elody Fluck joined the Chief Scientist’s Office of EUMETSAT.

Research

Weather compound events affect yearly millions of people worldwide and have the potential to cause substantial damages such as on ecosystems, crop yields or society infrastructures. Nevertheless, the knowledge about their quantification and underlying mechanisms remain limited (Tilloy et al., 2019). In fact, the total effects resulting from the interaction of multiple hazards can be underestimated as they lead to a greater impact than the sum of single hazard effects (Terzi et al., 2019). In this study, we will investigate on the interactions between four hot and dry natural hazards: heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and dust storms.
The main objectives of this study are : (i) to define and detect hot and dry weather compound events (HDWCE) using consistent and long-term ESA CCI datasets (25 years: 1996 to 2020), (ii) to establish a catalog of HDWCE with their characteristics, (iii) To assess the spatial and temporal distribution of HDWCE in Europe and regionally.
In this project, two principal datasets are used to cover the time frame 1996 to 2020: ERA5 fields to assess environmental preconditions of HDWCE and ESA CCI to identify HDWCE in time and space.
Concerning the methods, all ESA CCI are first aggregated on a unique grid to be able to identify HDWCE in a consistent manner during 25 years. Natural hazards are detected by using threshold exceedances in climatology anomalies.
After the detection of individual natural hazards, a matching algorithm developed during this research is applied on ESA CCI datasets to identify HDWCE. Their characteristics (start, end, duration, impacted area, location) are then stored in a catalog of events.