Kalpana Hamal

NH Natural Hazards

The 2024 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Kalpana Hamal for the poster/PICO entitled:

Quantification of the Physical Process Leading to Day-to-Day Temperature (DTDT) Extremes (Hamal, K.; Pfahl, S.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Kalpana Hamal is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Meteorology, Freie Universität Berlin, working under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Stephan Pfahl in the Weather and Climate Processes research group. Her research focuses on exploring historical and future variations in day-to-day (DTD) changes in climatic parameters, specifically temperature and precipitation, and the physical process behind these variations.

Her work presented at EGU24 focuses exclusively on extreme day-to-day temperature changes (DTDT), which are shown to be more pronounced in mid- and high-latitude regions compared to tropical areas, particularly during the December-January-February (DJF) season. The processes leading to these extremes are investigated across various global locations using observational data, ERA5 reanalysis, and Lagrangian backward trajectory calculations. The findings indicate that advection from warmer or colder regions plays a significant role in DTDT extremes in all regions except the tropics. In the extratropics, Lagrangian temperature changes play a complementary role, either amplifying or dampening the DTDT extremes. However, in the tropics, local processes, especially radiative heating, take precedence over advection. The mechanistic insights gained from this study offer valuable potential for improving predictions of extreme DTDT events and anticipating future changes in their frequency and intensity.