Research Focus
In my research I investigate the possible effects of climate change on thunderstorms and hailstorms, with a focus on the topographically complex Alpine region. It is generally agreed that climate change will effect severe convection. However, there remains high uncertainty on exactly what the changes will be and how they will manifest. In my work I use the output of numerical weather prediction models to study thunderstorms in future climate scenarios. This work requires the weather models to be run at very high spatial and temporal resolution, so that small-scale processes involved in convection are well represented. I use a feature-based approach in which a thunderstorm tracker designed for use with radar data is used to produce information on all individual storm cells in the model output. Statistical analyses of the properties of the simulated thunderstorms allow for comparisons between the present climate and future scenarios.
