Operational public version of the ESWD:
eswd.eu
ESWD project working group webpages:
(Login)
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Operational public version of the ESWD: |
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ESWD project working group webpages: |
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Severe thunderstorms, with their attendant strong winds, hail, flooding, and tornadoes, are common phenomena in many European countries, leading to a total damage estimate of 5 to 8 billion Euros per year (source: Munich RE). However, their documentation and analysis in the scientific literature have been relatively sparse from about 1950-2000. Most notably, a pan-European database of in situ severe storm reports was unavailable even a few years ago.
The main objective of the European Severe Weather Database (ESWD, cf. Groenemeijer et al., 2004, 2009; Brooks and Dotzek, 2008; Dotzek et al., 2009) is to collect and provide detailed and quality-controlled information on severe convective storm events over Europe using a homogeneous and interoperable data format and a web-based user-interface where both the collaborating national meteorological and hydrological services (NMHS) and voluntary observer networks, like Skywarn, as well as the public can contribute and retrieve observations. These features were identified to be needed to overcome the present fragmentation of severe weather databases in Europe, and to gain acceptance by the European NMHS.
The following categories of severe weather are included in the ESWD at this time: Straight-line winds (>25 m/s), tornadoes, large hail (diameter >2 cm), heavy precipitation, funnel clouds, gustnadoes, and lesser whirlwinds. Extending the range of covered phenomena is among our future ESWD objectives.
The input to the ESWD by the ESSL, its partner organisations, and the public has led to a large increase in reports over the last years. This requires a an appropriate quality-control (QC) procedure, which is currently one of the most important tasks of the ESSL in operating the ESWD. ESSL is mainly responsible for QC of all reports coming in via the public interface from countries without any partner organisation, while the cooperating NMHS or oberver networks are responsible for QC of the severe weather reports from their own countries.
Both ESSL and its partners follow a 3-level QC process. The meaning of the three quality-control levels in the ESWD and the underlying regulations for their assignment are as follows:
ESWD quality-control levels denote the reliability of the contained information, and do not refer to the mere quantity of information (number of filled database fields).
The significant step in report quality takes place from QC0+ to QC1. Both QC1 and QC2 reports are confirmed and suitable for quantitative analysis. However, for some analyses, even the QC0+ reports will still be adequate.
The ESWD data format also contains fields with metadata information. For instance, aside from the pure tornado or straight-line wind intensity rating, there are also fields describing on what kind of information this intensity rating was based. In case of no information available for an intensity rating, then the event remains unrated - contrary to some other severe storm databases, there are no "default intensity ratings" in the ESWD.
The ESWD data format allows for both detailed event information and thorough quality-control. Replacing earlier voluntary efforts, since 2007 part-time ESSL staff have entered and quality-controlled reports. There are close contacts with colleagues at the cooperating NMHS and voluntary observer networks concerning the QC of events reported from their countries and in merging multiple reports of events which were entered to the database independently. These first years of ESWD operations are a learning period for developing best practices in handling the QC challenge.
Applications of the ESWD include, but are not limited to:
What is your potential application of the ESWD data? If you plan to use the ESWD data regularly or for quantitative evaluation, you should become a registered user or, for instance, a supporting member of the ESSL. As a registered user, you enjoy several benefits, like:
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Becoming a registered user is free of charge for non-commercial, academic use of the ESWD data. Please contact the ESSL to register as a user or to apply for membership.
The public ESWD interface is open to everybody who would like to add or extract severe convective storm reports or download ESWD maps. However, the following Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) condition always applies:
Registered ESWD users and ESSL members accessing the ESWD are also required to sign a user agreement in order to enjoy the full capabilities of the ESWD software.
The ESWD was initiated by Fulvio Stel and Dario Giaiotti of ARPA-FVG in Italy, who first proposed a text-based database of severe weather events covering Europe during the 2nd ECSS Conference in Prague, August 2002. The ESWD was further enhanced by its present graphical user interface (GUI) in 2004. Pieter Groenemeijer then brought together a working group of experts to advise on a data format adapted for storage of severe weather data. This led to the present ASCII and CSV data format (version 1.40) which was first presented at the 3rd ECSS Conference in León, Spain, 2004. In 2005, the ESWD was established at the European Severe Storms Laboratory, then still an informal network of European scientists initiated by Nikolai Dotzek of the German Aerospace Center DLR. After two years of test operations, 2006 was the first year with operational ESWD service. In the same year, also the ESSL was formally established as a non-profit research organisation.
Despite all the achievements over the last years, there is still a long way to go until the ESWD can be called a truly mature database. For instance, underreporting of specific events is still notable in a number of regions in Europe. One option to overcome this is to extend ESSL's collaboration with NMHS and voluntary observer networks in Europe to augment and homogenise the database. Another point, and in fact one of the major strengths of the ESWD is to involve the public in the data reporting. The public ESWD web interface at www.eswd.eu encourages submission of reports from all over Europe and the Mediterranean region.
