Thunderstorm environments in Europe

Morgenstern, Deborah; Stucke, Isabell; Mayr, Georg J.; Zeileis, Achim; Simon, Thorsten

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-4-489-2023

Articles | Volume 4, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-4-489-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-4-489-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 4, issue 2

Research article

|

25 May 2023

Research article |

| 25 May 2023

Thunderstorm environments in Europe

Deborah Morgenstern, Isabell Stucke, Georg J. Mayr, Achim Zeileis, and Thorsten Simon

Data sets

ERA5 Hourly Data on Single Levels from 1979 to Present H. Hersbach, B. Bell, P. Berrisford, G. Biavati, A. Horányi, J. Muñoz Sabater, J. Nicolas, C. Peubey, R. Radu, I. Rozum, D. Schepers, A. Simmons, C. Soci, D. Dee, and J.-N. Thépaut https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

Supplementary material: Thunderstorm Environments in Europe D. Morgenstern, I. Stucke, T. Simon, G. J. Mayr, and A. Zeileis https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7838644

Short summary

Two thunderstorm environments are described for Europe: mass-field thunderstorms, which occur mostly in summer, over land, and under similar meteorological conditions, and wind-field thunderstorms, which occur mostly in winter, over the sea, and under more diverse meteorological conditions. Our descriptions are independent of static thresholds and help to understand why thunderstorms in unfavorable seasons for lightning pose a particular risk to tall infrastructure such as wind turbines.