Fostering Science–Industry Connections in Australia’s Severe Storm Science Community

Abstract

In Australia, severe convective storms cause significant damage through their associated hazards of hail, extreme wind gusts, extreme rain, lightning, and tornadoes (Allen and Allen 2016). Convective storms can kill or injure people, impact the built environment, and damage crops (Allen and Allen 2016) and disrupt utilities such as power generation (Earl et al. 2019). Hailstorms are a primary contributor to insured losses, with the costliest catastrophe on record in terms of normalized insured losses being the April 1999 Sydney hailstorm (ICA 2023b). Wind and rain produced by convective storms also cause damages that can extend into millions of dollars per event (ICA 2023a). Despite this high damage potential, there remain knowledge gaps in the physical understanding of severe storms, and around changes in their distribution, frequency, and intensity with climate change