Extreme weather events such as tornadoes are increasinglydocumented in Italy. A recent study conducted by CNR-ISAC confirmed theexistence of specific areas that are more frequently affected by thisphenomenon. One of these areas is represented by the Po Valley. Tornadoes,along with downbursts, are highly localized atmospheric phenomena with animpact radius of only few hundreds of meters to a few tens of kilometers, andwinds that are among the most violent ever recorded in nature. Winds of suchintensity are devastating for both civil structures and strategicinfrastructures. However, since these are very localized phenomena,meteorological models operating at the horizontal grid resolutions of fewkilometers and coarse time scales are unable to capture events that occur overa very short spatiotempral scales. It is therefore essential to adopt numericalmodels with extremely high resolution capable of replicating their localizedand unsteady nature at the scale of buildings. In a completely innovativeapproach, high-resolution computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and cloud modelsimulations will be used to reproduce tornadoes on both flat terrain and in morecomplex surroundings of Po Valley. These numerical simulations will aim toquantify the dynamical proceses of tornado genesis - through validation withreal-world measurements and laboratory tests already present in the literature.Validated models will further be used to evaluate tornadic wind impact onstructures.

The candidate should have knowledge of Computational FluidDynamics, mesoscale cloud models used in atmospheric sciences, atmosphericdynamics, data analysis and statistics. Programming skills inMatlab/Python/Fortran/C++ and knowledge of signal processing could also bebeneficial. Team working attitude and excellent knowledge of spoken and writtenEnglish are highly desirable.

The PhD candidate will carry out the research study at IUSSof Pavia, in the CARISMA group, in close collaboration with the McGillUniversity, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. The studentco-supervised by Dr. A. Ricci from IUSS of Pavia, Italy, and Prof. D. Romanicfrom McGill University, Canada, will benefit from the extensive experience ofthe two groups in climatology, wind measurement and modeling; wind effects oninfrastructures and environment; impact assessment of extreme natural events;risk management of natural and anthropogenic hazards.