Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- The significance of weather and climate extremes to society: an introduction
- I Defining and modeling the nature of weather and climate extremes
- 1 Definition, diagnosis, and origin of extreme weather and climate events
- 2 Observed changes in the global distribution of daily temperature and precipitation extremes
- 3 The spatial distribution of severe convective storms and an analysis of their secular changes
- 4 Regional storm climate and related marine hazards in the Northeast Atlantic
- 5 Extensive summer hot and cold extremes under current and possible future climatic conditions: Europe and North America
- 6 Beyond mean climate change: what climate models tell us about future climate extremes
- 7 Tropical cyclones and climate change: revisiting recent studies at GFDL
- II Impacts of weather and climate extremes
- Index
- Plate section
- References
3 - The spatial distribution of severe convective storms and an analysis of their secular changes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 September 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- The significance of weather and climate extremes to society: an introduction
- I Defining and modeling the nature of weather and climate extremes
- 1 Definition, diagnosis, and origin of extreme weather and climate events
- 2 Observed changes in the global distribution of daily temperature and precipitation extremes
- 3 The spatial distribution of severe convective storms and an analysis of their secular changes
- 4 Regional storm climate and related marine hazards in the Northeast Atlantic
- 5 Extensive summer hot and cold extremes under current and possible future climatic conditions: Europe and North America
- 6 Beyond mean climate change: what climate models tell us about future climate extremes
- 7 Tropical cyclones and climate change: revisiting recent studies at GFDL
- II Impacts of weather and climate extremes
- Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
Condensed summary
Severe convective storms are responsible for billions of US dollars in damage each year around the world. They form an important part of the climate system by redistributing heat, moisture, and trace gases, as well as by producing large quantities of precipitation.
Reporting of severe convection varies from country to country, however, so determining their distribution from the reports alone is difficult, at best. Evidence does exist that the intensity of some events, particularly tornadoes, follows similar distributions in different locations, making it possible to build statistical models of occurrence. Remote sensor observations provide some insight, but the relationships between the observable parameters and the actual events of interest limit the quality of the estimates. Another approach is to use observations of the larger-scale environments.
As has been stated, the relationship between the observation and the event limits the estimate, but global coverage is possible. Time series of the favorable environments can also be developed from such data. In order to improve the estimates, the most pressing need is for better observational data on events. Very few countries have formal systems for collecting severe thunderstorm reports. A new effort by a consortium of researchers in Europe to develop a continent-wide database offers the possibility of a significant improvement in data for that part of the world.
Introduction
Convective storms play a vital role in weather and climate. They act to redistribute heat, moisture, and trace gases in the vertical and in the horizontal.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Climate Extremes and Society , pp. 35 - 53Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
References
(1955). Types of airmasses in which tornadoes occur. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 36, 349–50.Google Scholar
(1958). Tornado proximity soundings. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 39, 195–201.Google Scholar
, , , and (2007). Tornadoes in Germany 1950–2003 and their relation to particular weather conditions. Global and Planetary Change, 57(1–2), 124–38, doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2006.11.007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2004). Tornado warning performance in the past and future: a perspective from signal detection theory. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 85, 837–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, H. E. (2006). A global view of severe thunderstorms: estimating the current distribution and possible future changes. Preprints, Symposium on the Challenges of Severe Convective Storms, Atlanta: American Meteorological Society, Conference CD. (Available at http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/users/brooks/public_html/papers/AMS2K6.pdf).
, and (2002). A database of proximity soundings for significant severe thunderstorms. 1957–1993. Preprints, Twenty-first Conference on Severe Local Storms. San Antonio: American Meteorological Society, pp. 639–42.Google Scholar
, and (2001a). Normalized damage from major tornadoes in the United States: 1890–1999. Weather Forecasting, 16, 168–76.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2001b). Some aspects of the international climatology of tornadoes by damage classification. Atmospheric Research, 56, 191–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , and (2007). Climatological aspects of convective parameters from the NCAR/NCEP reanalysis. Atmospheric Research, 83, 294–305, doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2005.08.005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1994). On the environments of tornadic and nontornadic mesocyclones. Weather Forecasting, 9, 606–18.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2003a). Climatological estimates of local daily tornado probability. Weather Forecasting, 18, 626–40.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2003b). The spatial distribution of severe thunderstorm and tornado environments from global reanalysis data. Atmospheric Research, 67–68, 73–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1996). Verification of aircraft icing forecasts: the use of standard measures and meteorological covariates. Preprints, Thirteenth Conference on Probability and Statistics in the Atmospheric Sciences. San Francisco, CA: American Meteorological Society, pp. 251–2.Google Scholar
, , and (2000). Climatological risk of strong and violent tornadoes in the United States. Preprints, Second Symposium on Environmental Applications. Long Beach, CA: American Meteorological Society, pp. 212–19.Google Scholar
, , and (1984). Review of Weibull statistics for estimation of wind speed distributions. Journal of Climatology and Applied Meteorology, 23, 1173–83.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2004). Baseline climatology of sounding derived parameters associated with deep, moist convection. National Weather Digest, 28, 13–24.Google Scholar
(ed.) (2001). Severe Convective Storms. (Meteorological Monographs, No. 50.) Boston, MA: American Meteorological Society.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2005). Climatological estimates of daily local nontornadic severe thunderstorm probability for the United States. Weather Forecasting, 20, 577–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2003). An updated estimate of tornado occurrence in Europe. Atmospheric Research, 67–68, 153–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2003). Statistical modeling of tornado intensity distributions. Atmospheric Research, 67–68, 163–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , and (2005). Observational evidence for exponential tornado intensity distributions over specific kinetic energy. Geophysical Research Letters, 32, L24813, doi:10.1029/2005GL024583.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2005). Assessing a tornado climatology from global tornado intensity distributions. Journal of Climate, 18, 585–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fujita, T. T. (1971). Proposed characterization of tornadoes and hurricanes by area and intensity. SMRP Research Paper 97, University of Chicago.
Fulks, H. W. (1967). Thunderstorms and related severe weather in Europe. European Theater Weather Orientation (ETWO), US Air Force Europe, July 1967.
(1969). A synoptic review of the Pforzheim tornado of 10 July 1968. Technical Bulletin of the Second Weather Wing, Air Weather Service, US Air Force, April 1969, pp. 26–43.Google Scholar
, and (1999). Climatology and trends of U.S. surface humidity and temperature. Journal of Climate, 12, 811–28.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2001). Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2002). Workshop Report, IPCC Workshop on Changes in Extreme Weather and Climate Events, Beijing, China.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2007). Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. (available at http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm.)
, , , , and (1978). An augmented tornado climatology. Monthly Weather Reviews, 106, 1172–83.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2000). The statistical distribution of intense moist-convective, spiral vortices in the atmosphere. Doklady Earth Sciences, 371, 408–410. (Available from essl.org/pdf/Kurgansky2000.pdf.)Google Scholar
(1969). An investigation of recent tornadoes over France and Germany. Technical Bulletin of the Second Weather Wing, Air Weather Service, US Air Force, April 1969, pp. 3–25.Google Scholar
Lee, J. W. (2002). Tornado proximity soundings from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data. M.S. thesis, University of Oklahoma.
, and (1996). Multispectral, high-resolution satellite observations of plumes on top of convective storms. Journal of Atmospheric Science, 53, 361–9.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1997). Intense convective storms with little or no lightning over central Arizona: a case of inadvertent weather modification?Journal of Applied Meteorology, 36, 302–14.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1998). A baseline climatology of sounding-derived supercell and tornado forecast parameters. Weather Forecasting, 13, 1148–64.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2000). Lightning and SSM/I – ice-scattering mesoscale convective systems in the global tropics. Journal of Applied Meteorology, 40, 983–1002.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , and (2006). Buyer beware: some words of caution on the use of severe wind reports in postevent assessment and research. Weather Forecasting, 21, 408–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and (2006). Evolution of the U.S. tornado database: 1954–2003. Weather Forecasting, 21, 86–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1917). Wind- und Wasserhosen in Europa (Tornadoes in Europe). Die Wissenschaft, Bd. 60. Braunschweig: Verlag Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn. (In German; available at essl.org.)Google Scholar
- 20
- Cited by