Contact: romain.pilon@unil.ch
Office 4408, Géopolis Building
Romain Pilon is interested in various aspects of tropical meteorology. His work concentrates on deep convection and extreme events, such as tropical cyclones, while also exploring the impacts of climate change.
During his Ph.D., he worked on developing and evaluating parameterizations related to transport and scavenging in convective and stratiform processes (using radionuclides), thereby advancing climate modeling capabilities. Specifically, he created a theoretical framework to further study the vertical distribution of Saharan dust, gaining valuable insights into the Saharan air layer and the effects of convective clouds and precipitation on dust distribution.
In his research, Romain has addressed fundamental science questions, such as the effects of model resolution on simulated convective clouds or tropical cyclones. For example, he worked on providing a perspective on the parameterizations of convection within the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) framework and how it affects the MJO’s propagation. He also studied the future changes of Atlantic tropical cyclones, what leads to these changes, and their impacts on the sea states.
Now he has extended his interests to the connections between tropical and extratropical dynamics in the South Pacific. Specifically, he focuses on long cloud bands extending from the tropics to the mid-latitudes, which can result in floods across Polynesian islands (photo: Polynésie 1ère). He is working on understanding the large-scale processes leading to those systems.
Publications
cloudbandPy 1.0: an automated algorithm for the detection of tropical-extratropical cloud bands
Pilon, R. and Domeisen, D.
Geoscientific Model Development
[in press] doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1184
Control of the dust vertical distribution in the Saharan air layer by convection and scavenging.
Habib Senghor, Romain Pilon, Binta Diallo, Jerónimo Escribano, Frédéric Hourdin, Jean-Yves Grandpeix, Olivier Boucher, Moussa Gueye, Amadou Thierno Gaye and Éric Machu (2024)
Journal of Atmospheric Science Research
doi.org/10.30564/jasr.v7i1.6009
Projected future changes in tropical cyclone-related wave climate in the North Atlantic.
Ali Belmadani, Alice Dalphinet, Fabrice Chauvin, Romain Pilon and P. Palany (2021).
Climate Dynamics
doi:10.1007/s00382-021-05664-5.
Future changes in Atlantic hurricanes with the rotated-stretched ARPEGE-Climat model at very high resolution.
Fabrice Chauvin, Romain Pilon, Ali Belmadani and P. Palany (2019).
Climate Dynamics
doi: 10.1007/s00382-019-05040-4
Roles of deep and shallow convection and microphysics in the MJO simulated by the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS).
Romain Pilon, Chidong Zhang and Jimy Dudhia (2016).
J. Geophys. Res. Atmos.
doi.org/10.1002/2015JD024697
Representation of transport and scavenging of trace particles in the Emanuel moist convection scheme.
Romain Pilon, Jean-Yves Grandpeix and Philippe Heinrich (2015).
Q.J.R. Meteorol. Soc.
doi.org/10.1002/qj.2431
Simulation of 210Pb and 7Be scavenging in the tropics by the LMDz general circulation model.
Philippe Heinrich and Romain Pilon (2013).
Atmospheric Research
doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2013.07.004