Version 1
: Received: 16 July 2023 / Approved: 17 July 2023 / Online: 17 July 2023 (11:26:18 CEST)
How to cite:
Duti, B.M.; Gysegem, J.V.; Khosravi, M.; Yazdan, M.M.S. Response of Severe Thunderstorm Environments in Belgium to Climate Change. Preprints2023, 2023071070. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202307.1070.v1
Duti, B.M.; Gysegem, J.V.; Khosravi, M.; Yazdan, M.M.S. Response of Severe Thunderstorm Environments in Belgium to Climate Change. Preprints 2023, 2023071070. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202307.1070.v1
Duti, B.M.; Gysegem, J.V.; Khosravi, M.; Yazdan, M.M.S. Response of Severe Thunderstorm Environments in Belgium to Climate Change. Preprints2023, 2023071070. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202307.1070.v1
APA Style
Duti, B.M., Gysegem, J.V., Khosravi, M., & Yazdan, M.M.S. (2023). Response of Severe Thunderstorm Environments in Belgium to Climate Change. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202307.1070.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Duti, B.M., Marzieh Khosravi and Munshi Md Shafwat Yazdan. 2023 "Response of Severe Thunderstorm Environments in Belgium to Climate Change" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202307.1070.v1
Abstract
Strong convective storms can be a serious threat to modern society, influencing both the economy and human life. Thunderstorms can bring much-needed rain after a dry spell, but the nature of thunderstorm mostly causes damage due to high wind associated with it and heavy intensity rain that mostly causes quick overlandflow and flashfloods. The paper focused on the 2011 Pukkelpop event in Belgium where due to heavy thunderstorm a lot of financial damage occurred, and five casualties. In this paper we look into the basic elements that enforces the creation of a thunderstorm like CAPE and windshear. A representative grid has been taken from the Alaro-0 model of 12.5 km resolution for the analysis of the thunderstorm over Belgium which is detailed out in the methodology. The model runs of Alaro-0 from Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI) is used for historical and future years for CAPE and Shear. We look into STEnv which is a composite number that can provide some insight on occurrence of thunderstorm, and STEnv is when CAPE*Shear exceeds certain threshold. In this study the threshold has been chosen as 97%. Only summer months have been taken into account into this study as summer(s) has the most thunderstorm in Belgium. The analysis of CAPE and STEnv over historical period (1977-2005), near future (2041-2069) and far future (2071-2099) shows significant increase in occurrence of thunderstorm in the 2071-2099s, specially in extreme cases such as 97% and 99% quantile. CAPE (J/Kg) increases in all future scenarios compared to the historical period. In 2071-2099s, CAPE increases from 2100 J/Kg to 2300 J/Kg (90% quantile) and from 3500 J/Kg to 3900 J/Kg (99% quantile) compared to the historical period. The number of STEnv increases from 300 to 378 in top 10% storm case (90% quantile), 158 to 218 in top 5% storm (95% quantile), 97 to 153 in top 3% storm (97% quantile) and 33 to 66 in top 1% storm (99% quantile) with a 90% confidence interval overall. Shear mostly remains unchanged. The study also shows spatial variation of CAPE, shear and STEnv over Belgium for present and future scenarios in different extremities (90%, 95%, 97% and 99% quantiles). There is a good indication that increase in CAPE translates to increase in STEnv, which is an accepted measure to predict occurrence of thunderstorm. Future climate change also amplifies the occurrence of thunderstorm, which is coherent with relevant studies. The uncertainty related to the study can be reduced with more detailed dataset and involvement of numerical weather prediction models beyond data statistics.
Keywords
thunderstorms; convective available potential energy (CAPE); climate change; alaro model; numerical weather prediction models; stenvs; shear; Belgium
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Atmospheric Science and Meteorology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
