President: Davide Faranda
(Emailnp@egu.eu)
Deputy President: François Schmitt
(Email)
ECS Representative: Mireia Ginesta-Fernandez
(Emailecs-np@egu.eu)
The Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences (NP) Division is an interdisciplinary division which is concerned with all aspects on nonlinear and stochastic theories, methods and data in the geosciences. The NP division is focused on a series of nonlinear paradigms whose applications cut across the different disciplines of the geosciences (hydrosphere, atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, space sphere…). Examples include chaos, tipping points, nonlinear waves, similarity across scales (scaling, scale invariance, fractals, multifractals), network theory, nonlinear stochastics, predictability and its limits, pattern formation, self-organised criticality, extreme events, deep learning… The NP division welcomes mathematical and theoretical approaches, as well as applications including new methodologies, new modelling and new data analysis techniques.
Due to its interdisciplinary character, many of the NP-sessions during the EGU general assemblies are co-organized with sessions from other divisions. Potential contributors to any session are encouraged to evaluate the benefits of a multi-disciplinary organization in collaboration with the corresponding disciplinary Division.
The division is structured into several subdivisions (see the “About” tab above, for the NP Division structure information and reports).
The Division contributes to the EGU Awards & Medals programme. As for all EGU Divisions, an Early Career Scientist Award is established also for the NP Division and is given to young researchers who obtained outstanding results in the nonlinear geosciences. Every year the Lewis Fry Richardson medal is awarded to scientists for their exceptional contributions to nonlinear geosciences in general. Members of the Division are invited to contribute to the nominations (deadline are every year on the 15th June, see here) for both the NP Division Awards and Medals.
The division maintains very strong links with the EGU publication committee, and especially with the board of Editors of the open access journal Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics (NPG), an interdisciplinary journal for the publication of original research furthering knowledge on nonlinear processes in all branches of Earth, planetary, and solar system sciences.
Latest posts from the NP blog
From Theory to Impacts: Nonlinear Perspectives on Weather Extremes at UNDERPIN#2
From 1–5 August 2025, the medieval hilltop town of Erice, Sicily, hosted the second UNDERPIN workshop, a meeting organised within the Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences community and dedicated to advancing the science of weather extremes. The event brought together a truly diverse group of researchers, spanning climate dynamics, attribution science, socio-economic impacts, statistical physics, and mathematical modelling. This breadth reflected the complexity of extremes themselves, which demand insights from both theory and application, as well as the translation of research …
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AI-generated Images: the fragility of visual evidence in geosciences
Recently, an increased number of visually striking “scientific” images have been found online: snapshots of turbulent flows with dreamlike structure, eerily symmetric cloud patterns, and what appeared to be global temperature fields annotated with plausible colormaps and scientific-looking labels. Many of these posts quickly go viral on social media. And yet, in many cases, the images are not scientific at all. They are generated by artificial intelligence — and they are entirely fake. AI image generators like DALL·E, Midjourney, and …
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NP Interview the incoming Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences Division President: Davide Faranda
Today’s NP Interviews hosts the incoming NP Division President Davide Faranda. Davide is Research Director in Climate Physics in the Laboratoire de Science du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE) of the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He is an expert of weather extreme events such as cold spells, heatwaves, cyclones and severe thunderstorms. His research activity focuses on the attribution of extreme events to climate change, that is understanding how much greenhouse …
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Recent awardees
- 2025
- Lewis Fry Richardson Medal
The 2025 Lewis Fry Richardson Medal is awarded to
Vincenzo Carbone for outstanding contributions to the study of turbulence in magnetohydrodynamics, particularly in the solar wind and space plasmas, as well as its impact on the Earth’s magnetosphere and climate.
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- 2025
- Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award
The 2025 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to
Johannes Jakob Lohmann for important contributions to our understanding of non-linear climate dynamics during the last glacial period.
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- 2024
- Lewis Fry Richardson Medal
The 2024 Lewis Fry Richardson Medal is awarded to
Annick Pouquet for her outstanding contributions to the field of theoretical and computational turbulence in neutral and conducting fluids, in particular in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence and dynamo theory.
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- 2024
- Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award
The 2024 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to
Simone Benella for his many original contributions in the field of stochastic processes, advancing the understanding space plasma dynamics.
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- 2024
- Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award
The 2024 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to
Abdallah Aoude Design of a new laboratory earthquake experiment
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Current issue of the EGU newsletter
In our August issue we find out more about the discovery and research of Sue the T-Rex, 25 years after the skeleton was found, CP Rajendran revisits the devastating 1950 Assam-Tibet earthquake and shares what impact it had and continues to have on the Himalayan region, Zsanett Gréta Papp breaks down the newly published "Anti-Autocracy Handbook: A Scholars' Guide to Navigating Democratic Backsliding" to discover tips for academic resistance and Lorne Farovitch, a deaf transdisciplinary biomedical researcher and multilingual signer, explains the impact of climate change on deaf communities to Simon Clark in this month's GeoTalk.
Also now is the time to nominate a candidate for EGU President and other Council roles, by 3 September, and don't forget to submit your EGU26 session proposals by 13:00 CEST 16 September. All this and much more, in this month's Loupe!
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