Science Source
Vittorio A. Gensini and Thomas L. Mote
Journal of Climate
Published date August 28, 2018

Estimations of Hazardous Convective Weather in the United States Using Dynamical Downscaling

  • Uses high-resolution (4 km; hourly) regional climate modeling to resolve March–May hazardous convective weather east of the U.S. Continental Divide for a historical climate period (1980–90)
  • Uses a hazardous convective weather model proxy to depict occurrences of tornadoes, damaging thunderstorm wind gusts, and large hail at hourly intervals during the period of record.
  • The regional climate model does an admirable job of replicating the seasonal spatial shifts of hazardous convective weather occurrence during the months examined
  • Additionally, the interannual variability and diurnal progression of observed severe weather reports closely mimic cycles produced by the regional model
  • This is the first study to use coarse-resolution global climate model data to force a high-resolution regional model with continuous seasonal integration in the United States for purposes of resolving severe convection
  • Concludes that dynamical downscaling play an integral role in measuring climatological distributions of severe weather, both in historical and future climates

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