Tornadoes in Northern Eurasia: From the Middle Age to the Information Era

Chernokulsky, А. V.; Kurgansky, M. V.; Мохов, И. И.; Shikhov, Andrey; Azhigov, I. O.; Selezneva, E. V.; Zakharchenko, D. I.; Antonescu, Bogdan; Kühne, Thilo

doi:10.1175/mwr-d-19-0251.1

Cited by 41 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…The third approach allows to determine minimum probable Fujita-scale intensity based on tornado path length and width [2,10,62]. We used Weibull distribution parameters from [68] that link tornado intensity with path length and maximum width.…”

Section: Tornado Tracks Identification and Characteristics Estimatementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Information on seven tornadoes was confirmed by two or more independent data sources. We estimated the certainty of events (see [2] for details of this procedure) and defined the high level of certainty for 32 tornadoes, and the medium level for five tornadoes.…”

Section: The Main Characteristics Of Tornadoes and Associated Severe mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among 28 tornadoes of 3 June 2017, the strongest tornado passed near Visim and damaged forest on the area of 4.97 km 2 (Figure 7b,c). Its intensity substantially depends on the method of estimating (Table A2).…”

Section: The Main Characteristics Of Tornadoes and Associated Severe mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Tornadoes are one of the most devastating and hard-to-predict atmospheric phenomena observed in mid-latitudes. Moreover, the threat of tornadoes in Europe and Russia is substantially underestimated [1][2][3]. In particular, it was considered for a long time that tornadoes occur mainly in European Russia and are extremely rare east of the Urals [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, it was considered for a long time that tornadoes occur mainly in European Russia and are extremely rare east of the Urals [4]. Recently, Chernokulsky et al [2] showed that tornadoes are common for both European and Asian parts of Russia but confirmed that strong tornadoes (≥F3 on the Fujita scale [5]) are substantially less frequent east of the Urals. Particularly,…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017

et al. 2020

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Strong tornadoes are common for the European part of Russia but happen rather rare east of the Urals. June 2017 became an exceptional month when two tornado outbreaks occurred in the Ural region of Russia, yielded $3 million damage, and resulted in 1 fatality and 14 injuries. In this study, we performed detailed analysis of these outbreaks with different data. Tornadoes and tornado-related environments were diagnosed with news and eyewitness reports, ground-based meteorological observations, sounding data, global numerical weather prediction (NWP) models data, synoptic charts, satellite images, and data of specially conducted aerial imaging. We also estimated the accuracy of short-term forecasting of outbreaks with the WRF-ARW mesoscale atmospheric model, which was run in convection-permitting mode. We determined the formation of 28 tornadoes during the first outbreak (3 June 2017) and 9 tornadoes during the second outbreak (18 June 2017). We estimated their intensity using three different approaches and confirmed that, based on the International Fujita scale (IF), one of the tornadoes had the IF4 intensity, being the first IF4 tornado in Russia in the 21st century and the first-ever IF4 tornado reported beyond the Ural Mountains. The synoptic-scale analysis revealed the similarity of two outbreaks, which both formed near the polar front in the warm part of deepening southern cyclones. Such synoptic conditions yield mostly weak tornadoes in European Russia; however, our analysis indicates that these conditions are likely favorable for strong tornadoes over the Ural region. Meso-scale analysis indicates that the environments were favorable for tornado formation in both cases, and most severe-weather indicators exceeded their critical values. Our analysis demonstrates that for the Ural region, like for other regions of the world, combined use of the global NWP model outputs indicating high values of severe-weather indices and the WRF model forecast outputs explicitly simulating tornadic storm formation could be used to predict the high probability of strong tornado formation. For both analyzed events, the availability of such tornado warning forecast could help local authorities to take early actions on population protection.

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Section: Tornado Tracks Identification and Characteristics Estimatementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Main Characteristics Of Tornadoes and Associated Severe mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Main Characteristics Of Tornadoes and Associated Severe mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017

et al. 2020

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Thunderstorm activity at high latitudes observed at mannedWMOweather stations

Kępski

Kubicki

2022

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Ongoing global warming particularly affects the coldest regions of our planet, where thunderstorm activity is considered to be the lowest. Scientific studies usually predict that lightning will become more frequent in polar areas in a warmer world. The aim of this study is to test this hypothesis and present the current knowledge on thunderstorm occurrence at high latitudes (>60°) based on SYNOP data from manned WMO stations operating from 2000 to 2019. According to this source, most thunderstorm events at high latitudes occur in summer (85%), when the air temperature ranges from 15 to 25°C (70%), during the days with positive temperature anomalies (75%) and negative sea‐level pressure anomalies (65%). The highest thunderstorm activity is observed over inland areas, especially in the European part of Russia. The changes in thunderstorm frequency are only visible at certain WMO manned stations and mostly during the summer months. The regional Kendall test revealed a statistically significant increase in the number of thunderstorm days north of 60°N in Interior Alaska, northwestern Canada, much of Siberia and European Russia. A decrease in thunderstorm frequency over a larger area was detected only on the shores of the southern Norwegian Sea, and seasonally in spring in the northern Urals. The observed trends were strongest in the Central Siberia and Interior Alaska regions, where the increase in the number of thunderstorm days exceeded 5 per decade. For the entire high‐latitude area, the change in the number of days with thunderstorms was statistically insignificant, but for stations located 250–1,000 km from the coastline, the averaged increase amounted 1 day per decade.

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Climatology of 500‐hPa geopotential height anomalies associated with May tornado outbreaks in the United States

Ćwik

McPherson

Richman

et al. 2022

Intl Journal of Climatology

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This study supports efforts directed toward research on large-scale atmospheric patterns and on the variability of tornado outbreaks. Specifically, we applied rotated principal component analysis to identify synoptic-scale patterns of 500-hPa geopotential height associated with tornado outbreaks in the United States. We created a database of historic tornado outbreaks using kernel density estimation on events composed of at least seven tornadoes of magnitude (E)F2 or higher (major tornado outbreaks) that occurred in May from 1950 to 2019 (91 events). Results of the analysis show that the first three principal components explained the majority, that is, 74% of the total variation. Based on the analysis of congruence coefficients, the Promax oblique transformation was chosen as the most representative rotation in portraying physically meaningful modes and resulted in three main atmospheric patterns. Two of these, to the best of our knowledge, have not been yet identified as the most representative of tornado outbreaks in any previous studies. Additionally, results suggest that although synoptic patterns associated with major May tornado outbreaks remain the same over time, partial variability in their geographic location exhibits some cyclical behaviour, especially on decadal and multidecadal scales. Identifying these patterns can serve as a first step in determining how they may change under anthropogenic climate change in the future. K E Y W O R D S 500-hPa geopotential height, climate change, climatology, large-scale atmospheric patterns, principal component analysis, tornado outbreaks, United States

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Tornadoes in Northern Eurasia: From the Middle Age to the Information Era

Cited by 41 publications

References 71 publications

Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017

Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017

Thunderstorm activity at high latitudes observed at mannedWMOweather stations

Climatology of 500‐hPa geopotential height anomalies associated with May tornado outbreaks in the United States

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