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Atmosphere
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Tornadoes in Europe: Climatology, Forecasting, and Impact
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Tornadoes in Europe: Climatology, Forecasting, and Impact

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Meteorology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 June 2020) | Viewed by 40151

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Bogdan Antonescu

E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor
Remote Sensing Department, National Institute for Research and Development in Optoelectronics INOE 2000, Bucharest, Romania
Interests: remote sensing of clouds and precipitation; cloud radar; weather and climate extremes; climate change
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Tornadoes, some of nature’s most violent and spectacular weather phenomena, are not considered to be a threat to Europe. The general public often assumes that tornadoes do not occur in Europe, and if they are observed they are considered to be less frequent and weak compared with tornadoes from the United States. This opinion is shared even by researchers and meteorologists despite the long history of tornado observations in Europe and even though some of the European tornadoes were associated with damages, injuries, and even fatalities.  Very few European countries have maintained and developed tornado databases and even fewer have issued or are currently issuing tornado warnings. This has led to an underestimation of the tornado threat to Europe, despite the recent interest in this type of severe weather phenomena. Thus, without a systematic collection and verification of tornado reports in Europe, without an understanding of their climatology and societal and economic impact, without programs to support tornado forecasting and warnings, and without measures to reduce their vulnerability, the tornado threat will continue to be underestimated in Europe.

To better understand tornadoes and their threat to Europe, we invite you to contribute to this Special Issue with original and review articles about the observation, numerical simulation, forecasting, and impact of European tornadoes. Solicited contributions may include, but are not limited to local tornado climatologies, high-resolution numerical simulation of high-impact events, overviews of tornado environments, tornado damage surveys, social and economic impacts of tornadoes, future climate change impacts on tornadoes, and forecasting and nowcasting of tornadoes. Risk modeling studies and seasonal tornado forecasting are also encouraged.

Dr. Bogdan Antonescu
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • Tornadoes
  • Tornado climatology
  • Numerical simulation of tornadoes
  • Tornado environments
  • Tornado forecasting
  • Societal and economic impact of tornadoes

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

35 pages, 15489 KiB  
Article
Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017
by Alexander Chernokulsky, Andrey Shikhov, Alexey Bykov and Igor Azhigov
Atmosphere 2020, 11(11), 1146; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111146 - 22 Oct 2020
Cited by 20 | Viewed by 3860
Abstract
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 [...] Read more.
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. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tornadoes in Europe: Climatology, Forecasting, and Impact)
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26 pages, 7659 KiB  
Article
Tornadoes in Romania—from Forecasting and Warning to Understanding Public’s Response and Expectations
by Simona Andrei, Meda Daniela Andrei, Mihăiţă Huştiu, Sorin Cheval and Bogdan Antonescu
Atmosphere 2020, 11(9), 966; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11090966 - 10 Sep 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 5504
Abstract
Significant progress in tornado research and management can be claimed over the last few decades worldwide. However, tornado forecasting and warning continue to be permanent challenges for most European national meteorological services because they require particular skills and experience. Moreover, tornado warnings may [...] Read more.
Significant progress in tornado research and management can be claimed over the last few decades worldwide. However, tornado forecasting and warning continue to be permanent challenges for most European national meteorological services because they require particular skills and experience. Moreover, tornado warnings may generate panic. Therefore, one can remark that the main difficulties are related to (1) forecasting the tornado genesis, and (2) finding the most efficient way to communicate to the general public the possibility of tornado occurrence. This article presents the main characteristics of two convective events that occurred in Romania in order to emphasize the similarities and disparities between the tornado event (30 April 2019) and the non-tornado event (6 May 2019), from the warning perspective. Further, we investigate, for the first time in Romania, the general public’s comprehension, risk perception and reactions regarding the tornado events. The survey performed in 2020 emphasized that the Romanian public is able to recognize tornadoes (60%), understand the risks (over 80%), can manage the panic (over 70%), and is rather desirous to receive clear (over 90%) and real-time (95%) tornado warnings. The lessons learned may support the further development of tornado forecasting and warning procedures, and foster the public’s awareness related to tornado events. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tornadoes in Europe: Climatology, Forecasting, and Impact)
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17 pages, 7672 KiB  
Article
A Challenging Tornado Forecast in Slovakia
by Miroslav Šinger and Tomáš Púčik
Atmosphere 2020, 11(8), 821; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11080821 - 4 Aug 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4838
Abstract
An F1 tornado hit the village of Lekárovce in eastern Slovakia on the afternoon of 3 October 2018. The tornado, which occurred outside the main convective season in Slovakia, was not anticipated by the meteorologists of the Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute. The models available [...] Read more.
An F1 tornado hit the village of Lekárovce in eastern Slovakia on the afternoon of 3 October 2018. The tornado, which occurred outside the main convective season in Slovakia, was not anticipated by the meteorologists of the Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute. The models available to the forecasters simulated an environment of marginal convective available potential energy (CAPE) and weakening vertical wind shear. This paper addresses forecasting challenges associated with events related to a tornado threat. To investigate conditions before tornado formation, observational datasets, including sounding, and vertical-azimuth display (VAD) data from a radar station and surface stations were used. Hodographs based on observational data and a higher-resolution run of the limited-area model showed stronger lower tropospheric shear than was formerly anticipated over the area of interest. The higher-resolution model was able to better represent the modification of the lower tropospheric flow by a mountain chain, which was crucial to maintaining the strong lower tropospheric shear in the early afternoon hours before the tornado’s occurrence. We discuss the importance of using both observational datasets and higher-resolution modeling in the simulation of lower tropospheric wind profiles, which affect the lower tropospheric storm relative helicity as one of the key ingredients in mesocyclonic tornadogenesis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tornadoes in Europe: Climatology, Forecasting, and Impact)
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21 pages, 5801 KiB  
Article
Tornado Risk Climatology in Europe
by Jürgen Grieser and Phil Haines
Atmosphere 2020, 11(7), 768; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11070768 - 21 Jul 2020
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 8981
Abstract
Violent tornadoes are rare in Europe but they can have devastating effects. Damage associated with individual tornadoes can reach several billion euros and they have caused hundreds of fatalities. The tornado risk varies considerably over Europe, but so far only a few national [...] Read more.
Violent tornadoes are rare in Europe but they can have devastating effects. Damage associated with individual tornadoes can reach several billion euros and they have caused hundreds of fatalities. The tornado risk varies considerably over Europe, but so far only a few national maps of tornado risk and one Europe-wide map exist. We show several different ways to create quantitative maps of tornado occurrence rates as follows: Kernel smoothing of observations, climatologies of convective parameters from reanalysis, output of a logistic regression model to link convective parameters with observed tornadoes, orography-dependent climatologies and finally the population-bias corrected tornado occurrence rates from the Risk Management Solutions (RMS) Europe Severe Convective Storm Model. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of each approach and compare the results. While the climatologies created from the individual methods show a lot of qualitative similarities, we advocate to combine the methods to achieve the most reliable quantitative climatology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tornadoes in Europe: Climatology, Forecasting, and Impact)
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22 pages, 2553 KiB  
Article
The Climatology of Significant Tornadoes in the Czech Republic
by Rudolf Brázdil, Kateřina Chromá, Tomáš Púčik, Zbyněk Černoch, Petr Dobrovolný, Lukáš Dolák, Oldřich Kotyza, Ladislava Řezníčková and Mateusz Taszarek
Atmosphere 2020, 11(7), 689; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11070689 - 29 Jun 2020
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 7182
Abstract
In the Czech Republic, tornadoes may reach an intensity of F2 and F3 on the Fujita scale, causing “considerable” to “severe” damage. Documentary evidence is sufficient to allow the creation of a chronology of such events, from the earliest recorded occurrence in 1119 [...] Read more.
In the Czech Republic, tornadoes may reach an intensity of F2 and F3 on the Fujita scale, causing “considerable” to “severe” damage. Documentary evidence is sufficient to allow the creation of a chronology of such events, from the earliest recorded occurrence in 1119 CE (Common Era) to 2019, including a total of 108 proven or probable significant tornadoes on 90 separate days. Since only 11 significant tornadoes were documented before 1800, this basic analysis centers around the 1811–2019 period, during which 97 tornadoes were recorded. Their frequency of occurrence was at its highest in the 1921–1930, 1931–1940, and 2001–2010 decades. In terms of annual variations, they took place most frequently in July, June, and August (in order of frequency), while daily variation favored the afternoon and early evening hours. Conservative estimates of human casualties mention 8 fatalities and over 95 people injured. The most frequent types of damage were related to buildings, individual trees, and forests. Tornadoes of F2–F3 intensity were particularly associated with synoptic types characterized by airflow from the western quadrant together with troughs of low pressure extending or advancing over central Europe. Based on parameters calculated from the ERA-5 re-analysis for the period of 1979–2018, most of these tornadoes occurred over a wide range of Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) values and moderate-to-strong vertical wind shear. The discussion herein also addresses uncertainties in tornado selection from documentary data, the broader context of Czech significant tornadoes, and the environmental conditions surrounding their origins. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tornadoes in Europe: Climatology, Forecasting, and Impact)
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28 pages, 76424 KiB  
Article
Tornadoes in Portugal: An Overview
by Paula Leitão and Paulo Pinto
Atmosphere 2020, 11(7), 679; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11070679 - 28 Jun 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 8400
Abstract
From 2000 onwards, a systematic documentation of tornado reports was maintained at the Portuguese Meteorological Service (IPMA). The characteristics of 195 tornado events over land and at sea off the coast of mainland Portugal, Azores, and Madeira Islands, reported until 2020, were compiled [...] Read more.
From 2000 onwards, a systematic documentation of tornado reports was maintained at the Portuguese Meteorological Service (IPMA). The characteristics of 195 tornado events over land and at sea off the coast of mainland Portugal, Azores, and Madeira Islands, reported until 2020, were compiled into a new tornado database for Portugal. Each event was identified through the direct observation of the vortex, photography or video footage, or eyewitness descriptions, as well as by site surveys, including the interpretation of traces of the tornado found on the ground. For events after 2006, each data record was complemented with Doppler radar observations and derived products, which allowed a tornado type (TT) classification. The synoptic regimes and atmospheric environments favoring each type were identified using observations and numerical weather prediction model data. Results showed that tornadoes over Portugal were more frequent during autumn, winter, and spring. It was found that the occurrence of more than one tornado on the same day was frequent. The most intense tornadoes, classified as F3 intensity, were spawned by supercells, but a large proportion of weaker, shorter-lived, but still damaging tornadoes were found to be spawned in association with quasi linear convective systems (QLCS). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tornadoes in Europe: Climatology, Forecasting, and Impact)
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