Toward an estimation of the relationship between cyclonic structures and damages at the ground in Europe

Abstract

Abstract.Cyclonic systems dominate European and Mediterranean meteorology throughout the year and often induce severe weather in terms of heavy and/or long-lasting precipitation with related phenomena such as strong winds and lightning. Surface cyclonic structures are often related to well defined precipitation patterns with different scales, duration and intensity. Cyclones confined in the upper troposphere, usually referred to as cut off low, may induce instability at lower levels and the development of convective precipitation.In this work the occurrence of cyclonic events (discriminated between surface ones and cut-off lows) is analyzed and matched with an economic losses database to highlight a relation between the atmospheric structures and the impact on the social environment in terms of casualties and material damages. The study focus on the continental Europe and, based on the ERA-40 reanalysis, two databases of surface cyclones and cut-off lows have been constructed by means of automatic pattern recognition algorithms. The impact on the local communities is estimated from an insurance company record, which provides the location, date and type of the events, as well as related losses in terms of damages and casualties. Results show the relatively high impact of cyclonic structures on human life in Europe: most of the weather induced damages occur close to a cyclonic center, especially during warm months. Damages and human losses are more frequent from late summer to January, and precipitation is the most relevant meteorological damaging feature throughout the year.

Seasonal and annual variability of days with strong winds and wind damage in Krakow (Poland) during the period 2000–2007

“…These expanded findings highlight the benefits of proxy data in evaluating urban wind climatologies and impacts and support previous studies that also utilised proxy data, including damage reports in the MRNat Cat archive of the Munich Re reinsurance company (Porcu and Carrassi 2009) Leckebusch et al 2008;Usbeck et al 2010a, b), wind speed will have to be considered in spatial planning, the design of buildings and other infrastructure and in educational curricula, especially in large urban areas such as Krakow.…”

Simulating lightning into the RAMS model: implementation and preliminary results

“…The second group contains simple schemes that correlate the hydrometeors or other parameters computed by cloud-resolving models (nowadays with horizontal resolution ≤ 3 km) with the number of observed flashes, giving the flash rate (Price and Rind, 1992;McCaul et al, 2009;Yoshida et al, 2009;Yair et al, 2010;Wong et al, 2013). Wong et al (2013), revised the Price and Rind parametrizations by applying the methodology in cloud-resolving models.…”

The RISC-KIT storm impact database: A new tool in support of DRR

“…During the EU Sixth Framework Program (FP6), the HYDRATE Project (Hydrometeorological Data Resources And Technologies for Effective flash flood forecasting attempted a similar exercise at a European scale (six member states) for flash floods. In a recent paper Porcu and Carrassi (2009) linked events recorded based on ERA-40 reanalysis data with the MRNat-Cat archive by the Munich Re reinsurance company for all weather-induced disasters in the period 1992-1996. Their approach is interesting as they managed to identify the damage by cyclonic systems, but remains rather confined to a short time period of only several years.…”