CESOC warmly invites you to the CESOC talk featuring Shirah Raveh-Rubin from Weizmann Institut of Science, who will be giving a talk with the title:
The Importance of Dry Intrusions for Air-Sea Interaction and Associated Weather Extremes
Date: Friday July 10, 2026 at 10:00
Location: TBC
for online participation, please contact info[@]cesoc.net
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Abstract
Dry intrusion (DI) air streams bring anomalously cold, dry, high-momentum air to the ocean surface, inducing intense air-sea interaction. The DIs comprise the cold and dry sector of extratropical cyclones, where air parcels descend slantwise from the midlatitude upper troposphere towards the surface in lower latitudes, where the airstreams typically fan out behind the cyclone’s trailing cold front.
In this talk I will review recent results based on a Lagrangian-based identification of DIs using representative case studies and longer-term climatologies, allowing the quantification of the intrusions’ occurrence frequencies and strong association with enhanced air-sea interaction. Focus will be given to the Mistral hotspot in the Mediterranean, the Indian Summer Monsoon and the North Atlantic Ocean, with global implications.
The key role of DIs in triggering intense air-sea interaction in the form of turbulent ocean heat and moisture loss provides new process-based insight on the DIs link to extreme weather events. Thus, DIs are not only directly related to strong winds and extreme cold temperatures but also to heavy precipitation ahead of the dry air. The importance of this link motivated the airborne field campaign NAWDIC, and extends from the midlatitudes to subtropical and tropical regions, opening new research avenues.
Bio/CV
2024-present Associate professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science
2017- 2024 Senior scientist, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science
2012-2017 Post-doctoral fellow, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Host: Prof. Heini Wernli
2007-2012 PhD, Department of Environmental Sciences and Energy Research, Weizmann Institute of
Science, Israel. Thesis title: Anomalous, non-conservative chemical transport in saturated porous media.
Advisor: Prof. Brian Berkowitz
2004-2006 M.Sc. in Atmospheric Sciences, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Thesis title: Characterizing Tropical Plumes over eastern North Africa that transport moisture to the eastern Mediterranean and Israel.
Advisors: Prof. Nathan Paldor and Dr. Baruch Ziv