Fabiana Castino

• PhD
• German Meteorological Service

The eastern flanks of the Central Andes are characterized by deep convection, exposing them to hydrometeorological extreme events, often resulting in floods and a variety of mass movements. We assessed the spatiotemporal pattern of rainfall trends and the changes in the magnitude and frequency of extreme events (≥95th percentile) along an E-W trave...

Recent studies have shown that the 1976-1977 global climate shift strongly affected South American climate. In our study, we observed a link between this climate shift and river-discharge variability in the subtropical Southern Central Andes. We analyzed daily river-discharge time series between 1940 and 1999 from small to medium mountain drainage...

This study analyzes the discharge variability of small to medium drainage basins (10²-10⁴km²) in the southern Central Andes of NW Argentina. The Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT) was applied to evaluate non-stationary oscillatory modes of variability and trends, based on four time series of monthly-normalized discharge anomaly between 1940 and 2015. St...

During the South-American Monsoon season, deep convective systems occur at the eastern flank of the Central Andes leading to heavy rainfall and flooding. We investigate the large- and meso-scale atmospheric dynamics associated with extreme discharge events (> 99.9th percentile) observed in two major river catchments meridionally stretching from hum...

The variability of meteorological extreme events in Europe is strongly affected by climate change. In particular, it has been shown that temperature extremes have increased in frequency, duration and intensity, becoming one of the natural disasters with the most severe socio-economic impacts for European communities. As climate change continues, se...

Das Projekt CONFILIENCE wird parallel zu anderen Projekten im Rahmen der Fördermaßnahme „Klimaschutz und Finanzwirtschaft – KlimFi“ der FONA – Strategie des BMBF finanziert. Ziel ist die Identifikation wetterbedingter Insolvenz-Risiken von Verbraucher:innen.

The characterization of the snow cover by snow water equivalent (SWE) is fundamental in several environmental applications, e.g., monitoring mountain water resources or defining structural design standards. However, SWE observations are usually rare compared to other snow measurements as snow depth (HS). Therefore, model-based methods have been pro...

The current European standard for snow loads on structures relies on characteristic values (i.e., snow loads with an annual probability of exceedance of 0.02 and referred to as the 50-year mean return levels) derived for Germany in 2005 using about 350 snow water-equivalent (SWE) time series from ground stations operated by the German Meteorologica...

When using cosmogenic nuclides to determine exposure ages or denudation rates in rapidly evolving landscapes, challenges arise related to the small number of nuclides that have accumulated in surface materials. Improvements in accelerator mass spectrometry have enabled analysis of samples with low ¹⁰Be content (5 atoms), such that it is timely to d...

The southern Central Andes in NW Argentina comprise small to medium drainage basins (102-104 km2) particularly sensitive to climate variability. In this area and in contrast to larger drainage basins such as the Amazon or La Plata rivers, floodplains or groundwater reservoirs either do not exist or are small. This reduces their dampening effect on...

Extreme hydro-meteorological events, such as severe droughts or heavy rainstorms, constitute primary manifestations of climate variability and exert a critical impact on the natural environment and human society. This is particularly true for high-mountain areas, such as the eastern flank of the southern Central Andes of NW Argentina, a region impa...

In the Andes of NW Argentina the distribution and amount of rainfall and associated surface processes are intimately correlated with pronounced topographic gradients and relief contrasts that intercept easterly moisture-bearing winds related to the South American Monsoon System. These conditions have led to a pronounced elevation-dependent distribu...

A selection of the results obtained in the framework of the research activities for the realisation of the Liguria (North Western Italy) wind map are presented. In that context, a method was developed and implemented combining wind speed data probabilistic analysis techniques and numerical codes for simulating wind fields over complex orography. By...

The knowledge of wind speed time series is necessary to evaluate, for instance, the power values produced by wind turbines, in order to investigate load matching and storage requirements. The usual description of the stochastic properties of wind speed independent of its direction is here criticized and an approach based on the coupled analysis of...

Feasibility studies for the deployment of wind turbines and for air quality analysis in coastal regions require detailed knowledge of wind climatology in this area. In practice, however, the information available is very limited. Thus, the improvement of the physical modelling in the existing relatively simple micrositing models seems to be a good...