PhD Giorgia Di Capua

Giorgia has a BSc and MSc in Physics from the University of Turin (Italy). She started working with regional climate change impacts during her Bachelor thesis, which was carried out at the ISAC-CNR institute in Turin (2012). After that, she started working at PIK (SACREX project) for her Master thesis (2014), which focused on meandering middle troposphere waves (Di Capua and Coumou, 2016).

In 2016 Giorgia started her PhD work (GOTHAM project), on the interactions between the mid-latitude circulation and the Indian summer monsoon rainfall. Her work, which was carried out in collaboration with several researchers from the University of Oxford, the University of Reading, VU Amsterdam University and the Indian Institute for Tropical Meteorology, focuses on applying causal discovery tools to the study of the physical interactions between enhanced convective activity in the tropical belt and surface and atmospheric patterns in the Northern Hemisphere during boreal summer (Di Capua et al. 2019, 2020a,b).

On the 8th of September 2021 Giorgia  got my PhD title from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

PhD dissertation title : The Indian Monsoon and its interaction with the mid-latitude circulation

Awards: 2021 Virtual Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (vOSPP) Award (Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences) https://www.egu.eu/awards-medals/ospp-award/2021/giorgia-di-capua/

*** 2024 ***

Carvalho-Oliveira, J., Di Capua, G., Borchert, L., Donner, R., and Baehr, J.: Causal associations and predictability of the summer East Atlantic teleconnection, EGUsphere [accepted].

Tian, Y., Giaquinto, D., Di Capua, G. et al.: Historical changes in the Causal Effect Networks of compound hot and dry extremes in central Europe. Commun Earth Environ 5, 764 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01934-2

Di Capua, G., Tyrlis, E., Matei, D. and Donner, R. V.: Tropical and mid-latitude causal drivers of the eastern Mediterranean Etesians during boreal summer. Clim. Dyn. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-024-07411-y

Docquier, D., Di Capua, G., Donner, R. V., Pires, C. A. L., Simon, A., and Vannitsem, S.: A comparison of two causal methods in the context of climate analyses, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 31, 115–136 (2024), https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-31-115-2024

*** 2023 ***

Di Capua, G., Coumou, D., van den Hurk, B., Weisheimer, A., Turner, A. G., and Donner, R. V.: Validation of boreal summer tropical–extratropical causal links in seasonal forecasts, Weather Clim. Dynam., 4, 701–723, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-4-701-2023, 2023.

*** 2021 ***

Di Capua G., Sparrow S., Kornhuber K., Rousi E., Osprey S., Wallom D., van den Hurk B. & Coumou D. (2021). Drivers behind the summer 2010 wave train leading to Russian heatwave and Pakistan flooding. npj Clim Atmos Sci 4, 55. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-021-00211-9

Harwood, N., Hall, R., Di Capua, G., Russell, A., & Tucker, A. (2021). Using Bayesian Networks to Investigate the Influence of Subseasonal Arctic Variability on Midlatitude North Atlantic Circulation, Journal of Climate, 34(6), 2319-2335. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0369.1

*** 2020 ***

Di Capua G., Runge J., Donner R. V., van den Hurk B., Turner A. G., Vellore R., Krishnan R., and Coumou D. (2020) "Dominant patterns of interaction between the tropics and mid-latitudes in boreal summer: Causal relationships and the role of timescales", Weather and Climate Dynamics
https://wcd.copernicus.org/articles/1/519/2020/  DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-1-519-2020

Di Capua, G., Kretschmer, M., Donner, R. V., van den Hurk, B., Vellore, R., Krishnan, R. and Coumou, D. (2020) "Tropical and mid-latitude teleconnections interacting with the Indian summer monsoon rainfall: A Theory-Guided Causal Effect Network approach", Earth System Dynamics
https://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/11/17/2020/  DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-17-2020

*** 2019 ***

Vellore R., Bisht J.S.H., Krishnan R., Di Capua G. and Coumou D.  (2019) "Sub‑synoptic circulation variability in the Himalayan extreme precipitation event during June 2013", Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-019-00713-5

Umakanth U., Vellore R., Krishnan R., Dey Choudhury A., Bisht J.S.H., Di Capua G., Coumou D. and Donner R. V.  (2019) "Meridionally Extending Anomalous Wave Train over Asia During Breaks in the Indian Summer Monsoon", Earth System and Environment. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41748-019-00119-8

Di Capua G., Kretschmer M., Runge J., Alessandri A., Donner R.V., van den Hurk B., Vellore R., KrishnanR. and Coumou D. (2019) "Long-lead statistical forecasts of the Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall based on causal precursors ", Weather and Forecasting - American Meteorological Society
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/WAF-D-19-0002.1

*** 2018 ***

Coumou D., Di Capua G., Vavrus S., Wang L. and Wang S. (2018) "The influence of Arctic amplification on mid-latitude summer circulation", Nature Communications volume 9, Article number: 2959 (2018)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05256-8

*** 2016 ***

Di Capua and Coumou (2016)  "Changes in meandering of the Northern Hemisphere circulation" Environ. Res. Lett. 11 094028
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/11/9/094028

Current projects:

PREVENT - IMPROVED PREDICTABILITY OF EXTREMES OVER THE MEDITERRANEAN FROM SEASONAL TO DECADAL TIMESCALES (HORIZON-RIA)

Past projects:

SacreX - Atmospheric circulation and its relation to extreme weather
https://www.pik-potsdam.de/research/earth-system-analysis/projects/project-pages-rd1/sacrex

GOTHAM - Globally Observed Teleconnections and their role and representation in Hierarchies of Atmospheric Models
http://belmont-gotham.org/

ROADMAP - The Role of ocean dynamics and Ocean-Atmosphere interactions in Driving cliMAte variations and future Projections of impact-relevant extreme events

The code for the Meandering Index as defined in Di Capua and Coumou (2016) is availble on Github.
https://github.com/giorgiadicapua/MeanderingIndex