Large Hail Incidence and Its Economic and Societal Impacts across Europe

Abstract

By 31 December 2018, 39 537 quality-controlled reports of large hail had been submitted to the European Severe Weather Database (ESWD) by volunteers and ESSL. This dataset and the NatCatSERVICE Database of Munich RE jointly allowed us to study the hail hazard and its impacts across Europe over a period spanning multiple decades. We present a spatiotemporal climatology of the ESWD reports, diurnal and annual cycles of large hail, and indicate where and how they may be affected by reporting biases across Europe. We also discuss which hailstorms caused the most injuries and present the only case with hail fatalities in recent times. Additionally, we address our findings on the relation between hail size to the type of impacts that were reported. For instance, the probability of reported hail damage to roofs, windows, and vehicles strongly increases as hail size exceeds 5 cm, while damage to crops, trees, and greenhouses is typically reported with hailstone diameters of 2–3 cm. Injuries to humans are usually reported with hail 4 cm in diameter and larger, and number of injuries increases with increasing hail size. Using the NatCatSERVICE data, we studied economic losses associated with hailstorms occurring in central Europe and looked for long-term changes. The trend in hail losses and the annual number of hail loss days since 1990 to 2018 are compared to that of meteorological conditions favorable for large hail as identified by ESSL’s Additive Regression Convective Hazards model. Both hail loss days and favorable environments show an upward trend, in particular since 2000.

Quantifying Hail and Lightning Risk Factors Using Long‐Term Observations Around Australia

“…Severe thunderstorms cause various meteorological hazards including extreme rainfall, damaging winds, tornadoes, hail, and lightning. These convection‐related hazards can cause billions of dollars (United States Dollars: USD) annually in damages to property, infrastructure, and crops as well as thousands of deaths globally (Botzen et al, 2010; Brown et al, 2015; Changnon & Burroughs, 2003; Kunz et al, 2018; Púčik et al, 2019). Damages from individual hailstorms can exceed 1 billion USD, e.g., for Germany (Kunz et al, 2018), for the United States (Brown et al, 2015), and for Australia (Schuster et al, 2005), and cause fatalities when hailstones approach and exceed 5 cm (Calianese et al, 2002).…”

Ambient conditions prevailing during hail events in central Europe

“…The investigation area is central Europe, including Germany, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, from 2005 to 2014, where data were available. Since SCSs and HSs in Europe occur mainly in the summer half-year (SHY; Berthet et al, 2011;Punge and Kunz, 2016;Púčik et al, 2019), all analyses refer to the period from April to September.…”

Future Changes in Euro-Mediterranean Daytime Severe Thunderstorm Environments Based on an RCP8.5 Med-CORDEX Simulation

“…For the analysis of severe convective storm environments, instantaneous 12 UTC data for each day is used. The vast majority of the severe convective storms in the region occur between 12 UTC and 18 UTC, as shown by different sources of data, such as large hail observations across Europe [35], tornado observations across Europe [36], and radar-based thunderstorm analysis over northwestern Italy [37]. This timing is also the most close segment of the day for diurnal heating maxima for the whole domain, which is important in terms of convective initiation and maximization of instability.…”