UPS professor Fredi Portilla Farfán, PhD, participated in the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Viena, Austria along with co-authors Ana Tarquis, A. CEIGRAM-Universidad Politécnica de Madrid – Spain, José Luis Valencia,  Universidad Complutense – Spain,  Antonio Saá, A. Edafología- ETSIA – UPM- Spain and Villeta, M. Universidad Complutense de Madrid – Spain. They are all part of an inter-institutional research group made up by professors and scientists from UPS and UPM-Complutense.

Professor Portilla presented an article on his research on climate change, natural phenomenon and the application of mathematics in the field of agriculture. His article titled "Empirical meaning of DTM multifractal parameters in the precipitation context" measures precipitation's influence in the world's climate change and therefore there is a model to calculate precipitation annually, monthly and daily. This research is part of professor Portilla's doctoral thesis in 2012-2013 as well as the verification studies carried out by the research group from 2013 to 2015.

The model can be applied for scientific calculations of meteorological climate, followed by atmospheric predictions. It will be a useful tool to predict harvest and the evaluation of disasters. It is also a universal model established with climate patterns from the Iberian Peninsula, specifically continental Spain, transversally from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

Professor Portilla said that to carry out this study, they used real data from Iberian meteorological stations and designed a universal model in successive divisions (fractal) from annual, trimester, monthly, daily, hourly, and per minute.  This facilitates the prediction of future meteorological phenomenon of rain per decade, centennial, and millennium: possible droughts, floods and others.