2nd VALUE training school: "Statistical and Dynamical Downscaling of Extreme Events"

The 2nd VALUE training school "statistical and dynamical downscaling of extreme events", will be held from 21 to 31 October 2013 in Trieste, Italy, hosted by the Earth Systems Physics (ESP) section at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). The ICTP webpage provides useful information related to transportation, campus services and facilities, etc... 

Grants: No registration fee is required and COST grants for training schools (full grant: 1200€; half grant: 600€) will be granted to the traineess. Read the Vademecum, pages 37-39, with the details of COST grants for training schools. 

=> Registration is open until September 15th (final extended deadline). Register here at the ICTP online application system.

Program: The school is organized in two blocks (one week each). The first block provides an state-of-the-art introduction to statistical and dynamical downscaling, whereas the second block is devoted to downscaling methods for weather extremes (more information from the ICTP activities page). Morning sessions will be dedicated to lectures while in the afternoon the trainees will work in the computer lab.

Block 1. Dynamical and Statistical Downscaling (9:00-10:30, 11:00-12:30)
21 Oct. Introduction: GCMs and end users needs. E. Coppola, P. Giorgi, L. Mariotti
- Presentation of the training school and VALUE overview. E. Coppola
- Introduction to Global Climate Models. E. Coppola, P. Giorgi, L. Mariotti 
break
Presentations by some of the trainees:
- Comparison of statistical and dynamical downscaling methods in representing temperature extremes (A. Casanueva)
- Experience with dynamical downscaling in DHMZ (Croatia). (L. Srnec)
- Dynamical downscaling activity at the Hungarian Meteorological Service (G. Zsebeházi, P. Szabó)
* Brief presentation of the posters by the authors.

22 Oct. Regional Climate Models (RCMs). E. Coppola, P. Giorgi, L. Mariotti
23 Oct. Statistical downscaling: Perfect prognosis. J.M. Gutiérrez
24 Oct. Model Output Statistics (MOS) approaches. D. Maraun
25 Oct. Validation methodology and Limitations. D. Maraun

Afternoons (22-25 Oct.) (14:00-17:00) Training sessions with the RegCM model.

Block 2. Downscaling Extremes
28 Oct. Theoretical foundation of extreme value distributions. D. Maraun
29 Oct. Introduction to (weather and climate) extremes. S. Pfahl, M. Widmann
30 Oct. Statistical downscaling Methods for extremes. E. Hertig, M. Widmann
31 Oct. Downscaling extremes with RCMs. P.M.M. Soares

Training sessions: hands-on-session with R / the statistical downscaling portal

Lecturers:

D. Maraun (GEOMAR, Germany)
E. Hertig (Augsburg University, Germany)
P.M.M. Soares (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
J.M. Gutiérrez (Santander Meteorology Group. CSIC-UC, Spain)
M. Widmann (University of Birmingham) 
S. Pfahl (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
P. Giorgi (ICTP, Italy)
L. Mariotti (ICTP, Italy)
E. Coppola (ICTP, Italy)