Convection Week 2011
From 6 to 9th June 2011 an event week on the topic of Convection was organised. The event week consisted of several online sessions dealing with the forecasting, nowcasting and monitoring of convection with the use of satellites and radar.
Session 1
The first presentation was given by Helge Tuschy from Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD). He is one of the forecasters producing the valuable ESTOFEX forecasts and he gave a lecture on convection and how the convective outlooks in ESTOFEX are prepared.The second talk was held by Zoltan Polyanszky at the Hungarian Meteorological Institute, presented some of the typical convective scenarios with the focus on the usage of the background NWP fields and convective parameters. The role of the operational work of the forecaster who is responsible for issuing warnings was highlighted and in the end was reflected what was learned from the situations in recent years.
Session 2
Ramiro Romero is a scientist at AEMET involved in the Nowcasting SAF in which he helped to develop the SEVIRI Physical Retrieval product. The SEVIRI Physical Retrieval (SPhR) algorithm retrieves the atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles as well as surface skin temperature for one clear sky SEVIRI pixel, or a Field-Of-Regard (FOR) with contains M x M pixels. The central aim of the SPhR is to provide information on the water vapor contained in a vertical column of unit cross-section area in several layers in the troposphere and to provide some instability indices. These parameters are calculated from the retrieved profiles of temperature and humidity.In the second part, Aurora Bell (Meteo Romania) held a talk on the influence of the the Black Sea on the initiation of convective storms in South Eastern Romania in which she presented several cases with Doppler radar and satellite images and other integrated data. This talk was oriented towards forecasters and Aurora explained the role of the breeze in bringing together the right ingredients.
Session 3
Vera Meyer (ZAMG) presented her PhD research on "Cell tracking and Nowcasting using 3D lighting- and radar data in Southern Germany". The presentation was followed by Jean-Marc Moisselin (MF) from the Nowcasting SAF presenting the new developments of cell tracking with SEVIRI satellite data in the SAF product, Rapid Developing Thunderstorm (RDT).
Session 4
Davide Melfi (CNMCA) has helped to develop the NEFODINA product. This is an effective model designed for the detection and the forecasting of the convective systems evolution in the Mediterranean area. It is composed by a system of neural networks and a varying temperature threshold method. It is able to detect not only the convective clusters but also all the convective cells inside them. He explained the product and gave some examples of how the products are used.The second presentation was held by Aydin Erturk (Turkey), and is entitled "Detection and Monitoring Convective Storms by Using MSG Image and Products". The MSG SEVIRI is crucial data source for the nowcasting applications. Storm top features with IR imagery were well defined and published. MSGView software being operationally used for detection and monitoring convective storms at Turkish State Meteorological Service. Two case studies (a cold U/V and a cold ring shape) were demonstrated and discussed in this presentation.
Session 5
This presentation was given by Christo Georgiev on the use of the MPEF Divergence Product for diagnosing the divergence associated with upper-level wind field disturbances that produces forcing for ascent and favours the development of deep moist convection. This presentation was in that way longer since a lot of basic was also explained making it thus interesting for the operational forecasters dealing with convection.
Session 6
Presentation was given by Petra Mikus, a young researcher from the Croatian Meteorlogical and Hydrological Service DHMZ. The presentation presents results on the occurences of overshooting tops in convective clouds in relation to severe weather in Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. Second presentation was given by Thomas Krennert (ZAMG) on the use of the IR8.7 channel onboard MSG SEVIRI for the detection of deep moisture connvection (DMC) on marked WV boundaries.
Session 7
Presentation was held by Pieter Groenemeijer, who is the Director of ESSL, the European Severe Storms Laboratory. Pieter explained about the activities of ESSL and what the organization does for the meteorological community, such as supporting research in convective weather, offering a platform to discuss convective weather via the ECSS conferences and the operation of a European Severe Weather Database.The EUMETCAL High Impact Weather group addressed a series of convective events over Europe between 5 and 9 August 2010. This events affected many countries from southern areas - Mediterranean/Balkans - to northern areas - Baltic/Scandinavia. In the 30 minute presentation the group analyzed the events, combining the analysis of convection, namely by satellite, with the impacts perspective.