Vincenzo Carbone

The 2025 Lewis Fry Richardson Medal is awarded to Vincenzo Carbone for outstanding contributions to the study of turbulence in magnetohydrodynamics, particularly in the solar wind and space plasmas, as well as its impact on the Earth’s magnetosphere and climate.

Vincenzo Carbone contributed pioneering studies of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence of the solar wind and space plasma. One of his major achievements was the introduction of an MHD cascade model which fitted observed scaling laws and revealed the multifractal structure of fully developed MHD turbulence. In addition, he developed a number of MHD turbulence shell models which were able to explain several relevant phenomena in solar physics, such as the anisotropy of the turbulent cascade in the solar wind, the statistical properties of solar flares, and the evolution of MHD turbulence in the magnetic loops of the solar corona. His comprehensive studies of the solar wind led to the book “Turbulence of the solar wind” and the review “The solar wind as a turbulence laboratory” which are considered as milestones by researchers in this field.

The work of Vincenzo Carbone is closely linked to nonlinear dynamics, though his emphasis is on studying the physics of the heliosphere by applying nonlinear techniques. He introduced a new theoretical framework for the power law scaling of the inter event time in solar flares and recognised the relevance of this new framework in many different nonequilibrium complex systems where similar features are observed. He related his studies on the role of the spatial organization in solar wind turbulence to coherent structure formation.

Vincenzo Carbone has published more than 300 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals. He is an active member of the geoscience community and has organized several workshops on nonlinear dynamics in the heliosphere at EGU meetings. Moreover, he has coordinated several European projects on topics of solar physics and participated in research programs of the ESA and the NASA. Furthermore, he is serving as an associate editor in the EGU journal “Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics”. He has been an active driving force in several international committees fostering the relevance and the scientific challenges of space weather research. Vincenzo Carbone was the co-founder and the president of the Space Weather Italian Community (SWICo).