Department of
Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics

Climate Physics, Oceanography and Meteorology

The laboratory is dedicated to the study of the physics of climate, especially to the physical mechanisms inducing interannual to multidecadal variability in the ocean and in the atmosphere. A region of particular interest is the Mediterranean basin.
Research activities focus on:

  • Role of natural forcing in paleoclimate phenomena;
  • Numerical modelling of small-scale and mesoscale oceanic features;
  • Impact of climate variability on sea level in the lagoon of Venice;
  • Analyses of atmospheric and oceanic observations.
Research group

Publications

  • Lucia, G., Zanchettin, D., Winter, A. et al. Atlantic Ocean thermal forcing of Central American rainfall over 140,000 years. Nat Commun 15, 10586 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-54856-0
  • Zanchettin, D., Rubino, A. Accelerated North Atlantic surface warming reshapes the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability, Comm. Earth & Environm. 2024, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01804-x
  • Rubino, A., Pierini, S., Rubinetti, S., Gnesotto, M., Zanchettin, D. (2023) The Skeleton of the Mediterranean Sea. J. Mar. Sci. Eng.  11, 2098, https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11112098
  • Montanari, A., Nguyen, H., Rubinetti, S., Galelli, S., Rubino, A., and Zanchettin, D. (2023), Why the 2022 Po River drought is the worst in the past two centuries. Sci. Adv. 9, eadg8304, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adg8304
  • Rubino A., Gacic M., Bensi M., Kovacevic V., Malacic V., Menna M., Negretti M. E., Sommeria J., Zanchettin D., Barreto R. V., Ursella L., Cardin V., Civitarese G., Orlic M., Petelin B., Siena G. (2020). Experimental evidence of long-term oceanic circulation reversals without wind influence in the North Ionian Sea. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, vol. 10, ISSN: 2045-2322, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-57862-6
  • Rubino A., Zanchettin D., De Rovere F., McPhaden M. J. (2020). On the interchangeability of sea-surface and near-surface air temperature anomalies in climatologies. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, vol. 10, ISSN: 2045-2322, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64167-1
  • Zanchettin, D. et al., Sea-level rise in Venice: Historic and future trends, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 21, 2643 - 26781, 2021
  • Zanchettin, D., T. Toniazzo, C. Taricco, S. Rubinetti, A. Rubino, Angelo; N. Tartaglione, Atlantic origin of asynchronous European interdecadal hydroclimate variability, Scientific Reports, 9,  2019

Research projects

ATTRACTION - ATlantificaTion dRiven by polAr-subpolar ConnecTIONs

Arctic sea ice extent has strongly declined during the past decades. This is especially pronounced at the Atlantic-Arctic boundary where warm and salty waters of Atlantic origin are progressively replacing the Arctic halocline layer. This phenomenon, known as Atlantification of the Arctic Ocean, has large-scale impacts on several environmental and economic aspects including retreat of the tide-water glaciers, stability of slope gas hydrates and sea ice loss. ATTRACTION proposes to analyse new archives from a strategic region of the Arctic bathed by the Atlantic inflow to provide novel data on sea-ice dynamics and seawater properties throughout the last millennium and compare these proxy-based reconstructions with ensembles of state-of-the-art paleoclimate and historical simulations to identify robust subpolar-polar connections. By combining novel evidence from sediment cores with model results, both validated by modern observations, ATTRACTION will shed new insights into the nature of Atlantification and will benchmark the ability of models to simulate the phenomenon. The project will ultimately assess our current capability in predicting future evolution in a region which is expected to face some of the most dramatic changes on Earth in a global warming scenario.

PNRA18_00199_IPSODES Investigating the predictability of the Southern Ocean dynamics through ensemble simulation hindcasts

The IPSODES project aims at improving the understanding of the processes underlying the predictability of the dynamics of the Southern Ocean (SO) and the various fronts of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), which are known to be characterised by highly energetic variations over a wide spectrum of spatial and temporal scales. Since a substantial part of this variability is intrinsic, and thus fundamentally chaotic, predictability in this part of the ocean is particularly limited. IPSODES will use ensembles of numerical simulations, which will be analysed using various statistical methods supported by dynamic interpretations, with a focus on the interactions between processes at different time scales and the link between high-frequency (up to seasonal scale) and low-frequency (interannual scale and beyond) variations. The project will be completed by an application to the study of the transport of floating material in the SO.

PREFACE - Enhancing prediction of tropical Atlantic climate and its impacts

The project aims at improving the forecasting performance of climate models in the Atlantic. To this end, advanced statistical methods are being developed, based on the principles of Bayesian statistics.

Website: http://preface.b.uib.no/

Last update: 22/09/2025