Francesca Di Giuseppe

Team Leader Thematic Applications
Forecast, Evaluation, Thematic Applications

Summary:

Transitioning from a background in operational meteorology and weather forecasting, Francesca has steered her focus toward meteorological applications, particularly related to drought, fire, and health. With a dedicated commitment to utilizing meteorological applications for global safety and environmental protection, she actively endeavours to convert extensive and intricate 'Big-Data' assets into valuable information across all time scales, encompassing reanalysis, medium, and long-range weather forecasts. Francesca spearheaded the development of models, datasets, and innovative products, utilizing both physical modelling and AI, crucial for empowering early warning systems, decision support tools, and adaptation/mitigation strategies. Recognized with multiple service contracts and research grants, she has garnered international acclaim for scientific expertise, delivering invited talks, keynote lectures, and general public interest outreach programs. She has organized and conducted courses, serving as a mentor for PhD students and advising World Meteorological Organization (WMO) panels. Her vast experience includes reviewing numerous scientific papers and proposals, with authorship and contribution to approximately 100 publications, focusing on meteorological applications, numerical weather prediction, and weather forecasts.

Professional interests:
  • Fire forecast modelling
  • Drought modelling
  • Early warning systems development
  • Forecasting of natural hazards driven by Numerical Weather Prediction models
  • Uncertainty/Sensitivity analysis and cascading of uncertainty/sensitivity 
  • Statistical post- and pre-processing of hydro-meteorological variables 
Career background:
  • 2024-present: Thematic Application Team Leader 
  • 2011–present: Fire Forecast project coordinator, Principal Scientist, ECMWF, UK
  • 2003–2010: Team leader at the Regional  Idro-Meteo- Clima service in Bologna (ARPAE-SIMC), IT
  • 2000–2003: PhD Meteorology  Department University of Reading, UK
  • 1998–2002: Postdoctoral research scientist, Physics Department University of Bologna, IT
External recognitions
  • Editor of Journal of European Meteorological Society 
  • Editor of Nature - Scientific Data 
  • Lead Author of State of Wildfires report 
  • Convener at the  EGU General Assembly
  • Reviewer for many international journals
  • 2025
  • 2024
    • Matthew W. Jones, Douglas I. Kelley, Chantelle A. Burton, Francesca Di Giuseppe, Maria Lucia F. Barbosa, Esther Brambleby, Andrew J. Hartley, Anna Lombardi, Guilherme Mataveli, Joe R. McNorton, Fiona R. Spuler, Jakob B. Wessel, John T. Abatzoglou, Liana O. Anderson, Niels Andela, Sally Archibald, Dolors Armenteras, Eleanor Burke, Rachel Carmenta, Emilio Chuvieco, Hamish Clarke, Stefan H. Doerr, Paulo M. Fernandes, Louis Giglio, Douglas S. Hamilton, Stijn Hantson, Sarah Harris, Piyush Jain, Crystal A. Kolden, Tiina Kurvits, Seppe Lampe, Sarah Meier, Stacey New, Mark Parrington, Morgane M. G. Perron, Yuquan Qu, Natasha S. Ribeiro, Bambang H. Saharjo, Jesus San-Miguel-Ayanz, Jacquelyn K. Shuman, Veerachai Tanpipat, Guido R. van der Werf, Sander Veraverbeke, Gavriil Xanthopoulos (June 2024) State of Wildfires 2023–24. DOI: 10.5194/essd-2024-218
    • Matthew W. Jones, Douglas I. Kelley, Chantelle A. Burton, Francesca Di Giuseppe, Maria Lucia F. Barbosa, Esther Brambleby, Andrew J. Hartley, Anna Lombardi, Guilherme Mataveli, Joe R. McNorton, Fiona R. Spuler, Jakob B. Wessel, John T. Abatzoglou, Liana O. Anderson, Niels Andela, Sally Archibald, Dolors Armenteras, Eleanor Burke, Rachel Carmenta, Emilio Chuvieco, Hamish Clarke, Stefan H. Doerr, Paulo M. Fernandes, Louis Giglio, Douglas S. Hamilton, Stijn Hantson, Sarah Harris, Piyush Jain, Crystal A. Kolden, Tiina Kurvits, Seppe Lampe, Sarah Meier, Stacey New, Mark Parrington, Morgane M. G. Perron, Yuquan Qu, Natasha S. Ribeiro, Bambang H. Saharjo, Jesus San-Miguel-Ayanz, Jacquelyn K. Shuman, Veerachai Tanpipat, Guido R. van der Werf, Sander Veraverbeke, Gavriil Xanthopoulos (June 2024) Supplementary material to "State of Wildfires 2023–24". DOI: 10.5194/essd-2024-218-supplement
    • Joe Ramu McNorton, Francesca Di Giuseppe, Ewan Mark Pinnington, Matthew Chantry, Chris Barnard (January 2024) A Global Probability-of-Fire (PoF) Forecast. DOI: 10.22541/essoar.170542063.30086889/v1
    • Joe R. McNorton, Francesca Di Giuseppe (January 2024) A global fuel characteristic model and dataset for wildfire prediction, Biogeosciences. DOI: 10.5194/bg-21-279-2024
    • Francesca Di Giuseppe, Claudia Vitolo, Christopher Barnard, Giorgio Libertá, Pedro Maciel, Jesus San-Miguel-Ayanz, Sebastien Villaume, Fredrik Wetterhall (January 2024) Global seasonal prediction of fire danger, Scientific Data. DOI: 10.1038/s41597-024-02948-3
    • J. R. McNorton, F. Di Giuseppe, E. Pinnington, M. Chantry, C. Barnard (June 2024) A Global Probability‐Of‐Fire (PoF) Forecast, Geophysical Research Letters. DOI: 10.1029/2023GL107929
    • Matthew W. Jones, Douglas I. Kelley, Chantelle A. Burton, Francesca Di Giuseppe, Maria Lucia F. Barbosa, Esther Brambleby, Andrew J. Hartley, Anna Lombardi, Guilherme Mataveli, Joe R. McNorton, Fiona R. Spuler, Jakob B. Wessel, John T. Abatzoglou, Liana O. Anderson, Niels Andela, Sally Archibald, Dolors Armenteras, Eleanor Burke, Rachel Carmenta, Emilio Chuvieco, Hamish Clarke, Stefan H. Doerr, Paulo M. Fernandes, Louis Giglio, Douglas S. Hamilton, Stijn Hantson, Sarah Harris, Piyush Jain, Crystal A. Kolden, Tiina Kurvits, Seppe Lampe, Sarah Meier, Stacey New, Mark Parrington, Morgane M. G. Perron, Yuquan Qu, Natasha S. Ribeiro, Bambang H. Saharjo, Jesus San-Miguel-Ayanz, Jacquelyn K. Shuman, Veerachai Tanpipat, Guido R. van der Werf, Sander Veraverbeke, Gavriil Xanthopoulos (August 2024) State of Wildfires 2023–2024, Earth System Science Data. DOI: 10.5194/essd-16-3601-2024
    • Fredrik Wetterhall, Francesca Di Giuseppe, Siham El Garroussi (August 2024) Tenfold Increase in extreme fires in Europe expected under warming climate. DOI: 10.5194/ems2024-1051
  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
  • 2018
  • 2017
  • 2016
    • (October 2016) The potential predictability of fire danger provided by numerical weather prediction, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.
    • (October 2016) Atmospheric composition changes due to the extreme 2015 Indonesian fire season triggered by El Niño [in “State of the Climate in 2015”], Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc.
    • Francesca Di Giuseppe, Florian Pappenberger, Fredrik Wetterhall, Blazej Krzeminski, San-Miguel-Ayanz J., Camia A., Libertà G. (October 2016) NWP-driven fire danger forecasting for Copernicus, ECMWF Newsletter, issue 147, pp. 34-39. DOI: 10.21957/ett9cmqc
  • 2015
    • (October 2015) Generalizing cloud overlap treatment to include the effect of wind shear, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.
    • (October 2015) Demonstration of successful malaria forecasts for Botswana using an operational seasonal climate model, Environmental Research Letters.
    • (October 2015) An interpretation of cloud overlap statistics, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.
    • (October 2015) Global forecasting of thermal health hazards: the skill of probabilistic predictions of the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI), International journal of biometeorology.
    • (October 2015) Potential predictability of malaria in Africa using ECMWF monthly and seasonal climate forecasts, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.
    • Francesca Di Giuseppe, A.M. Tompkins (June 2015) A parameterization of cloud overlap as a function of wind shear and its impact in ECMWF forecast, ECMWF Technical Memorandum n. 750. DOI: 10.21957/bbj59jvz
  • 2014
  • 2013
    • (October 2013) Relating mean radiosounding profiles to surface fluxes for the very stable boundary layer, Boundary-layer meteorology.
    • (October 2013) Real-time correction of ERA-Interim monthly rainfall, Geophysical Research Letters.
    • (October 2013) A rainfall calibration methodology for impacts modelling based on spatial mapping, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.
    • (October 2013) Seamless forecasting of extreme events on a global scale, Climate and Land Surface Changes in Hydrology, edited by: Boegh, E., Blyth, E., Hannah, DM, Hisdal, H., Kunstmann, H., Su, B., and Yilmaz, KK, IAHS Publication, Gothenburg, Sweden.
    • (October 2013) Seasonal forecasts of droughts in African basins using the Standardized Precipitation Index, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. DOI: 10.5194/hess-17-2359-2013
  • 2012
    • (October 2012) Automatic detection of atmospheric boundary layer height using ceilometer backscatter data assisted by a boundary layer model, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.
    • (October 2012) Inferring soil moisture variability in the Mediterrean Sea area using infrared and passive microwave observations, Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing.
  • 2011
    • (October 2011) The relevance of background-error covariance matrix localization: an application to the variational retrieval of vertical profiles from SEVIRI observations, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.
    • (October 2011) Soil initialization strategy for use in limited-area weather prediction systems, Monthly Weather Review.
  • 2009
    • (October 2009) Cloud radiative interactions and their uncertainty in climate models, Stochastic Physics and Climate Models.
    • (October 2009) Leaf area index specification for use in mesoscale weather prediction systems, Monthly Weather Review.
    • (October 2009) The potential of variational retrieval of temperature and humidity profiles from Meteosat Second Generation observations, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.
  • 2007
    • (October 2007) Reproducing cloud microphysical and irradiance measurements using three 3D cloud generators, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.
    • (October 2007) Generalizing cloud overlap treatment to include solar zenith angle effects on cloud geometry, Journal of the atmospheric sciences.
  • 2005
    • (October 2005) Sensitivity of one-dimensional radiative biases to vertical cloud-structure assumptions: Validation with aircraft data, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.
    • (October 2005) Impact of cloud cover on solar radiative biases in deep convective regimes, Journal of the atmospheric sciences.
  • 2003
    • (October 2003) Three-dimensional radiative transfer in tropical deep convective clouds, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
    • (October 2003) Solar radiative biases in deep convective regimes: Possible implications for dynamical feedback, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.
    • (October 2003) Effect of spatial organization on solar radiative transfer in three-dimensional idealized stratocumulus cloud fields, Journal of the atmospheric sciences.
  • 1999
    • (October 1999) Far infrared scattering effects in cloudy sky, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Part B: Hydrology, Oceans and Atmosphere.
    • (October 1999) Far infrared scattering effects in cloudy sky, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Part B: Hydrology, Oceans and Atmosphere.
    • (October 1999) Cirrus cloud optical properties in far infrared, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Part B: Hydrology, Oceans and Atmosphere.