Geosciences Dept. Seminar: Atmospheric risks in Western Europe: A focus on hail potential

Abstract: 

Meteorological extreme events, such as winter storms, heavy precipitation, hail, or convective wind gusts are often associated with serious impacts for the society and their assets in Europe. With hail damage estimated over Billions of Euros for a single event (e.g., hailstorm Andreas on 27/28 July 2013), hail constitute one of the major atmospheric risks in various parts of Europe.

The project HAMLET (Hail Model for Europe) in cooperation with the insurance company Tokio Millennium Re aims at estimating hail probability, hail hazard and, combined with vulnerability, hail risk for several

European countries (Germany, Switzerland, France,  Belgium and Luxembourg).

Hail signals are obtained from two dimensional  radar reflectivity from different radars operated by European weather services such as German weather service (DWD) and French weather service (Météo-France).

A cell-tracking algorithm  was adjusted and applied on two-dimensional radar data in order to reconstruct individual past hailstorms during the period 2005-2014, as well as the hail potential.

Spatio-temporal statistics were computed for Western Europe and the influence of topography will be discussed.

Finally, pre-convective environments assumptions favoring hail are presented.

Seminar Organizer: Prof. Eyal Haifetz