Research

The Climate Geography group researches the climate at global, regional and local scales and investigates its complex interactions with the hydro-, geo-, bio- and anthroposphere. A particular focus is on the analysis of small-scale extreme events such as heavy precipitation and hail, which have a significant impact on ecosystems and societies despite their limited spatial and temporal extent. The high variability of these events and the often large uncertainties in the underlying observation and model data make it difficult to analyze trends and changes, especially in complex topographic areas such as mountainous regions.

To improve the understanding of these extreme events, especially in the context of climate change, CliG analyzes high-resolution weather and climate data obtained from measurements and climate models and links them to other data sources. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the events themselves and their climatology, to improve existing data and further develop detection options and to use this knowledge to develop adaptation strategies for the consequences of extreme weather events.

CliG pursues collaborative, inter- and transdisciplinary approaches. In cooperation with the working groups of Geography, Environmental Meteorology and other working groups of the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources as well as national and international partners, the group works in particular at the interfaces with meteorology, hydrology and socio-economic disciplines in order to gain a holistic understanding of the role and impact of climatological forces.

Current Research

Research Project

CROSCEA Exploring Cross-Scale Processes of extreme convective events in the Alpine region

Convective events, characterized by extreme precipitation, wind, lightning, and hail, consistently account for a significant portion of insured natural hazard damages, particularly affecting the agricultural, vehicle, and building sectors. In recent years, record-breaking hailstone sizes (up to 19 cm in Europe), substantial damage costs, and prolonged, intense convective storms have been observed. The increase in temperatures due to global warming enhances the air’s saturation vapor pressure, thereby intensifying convective processes through moisture supply and increased latent heat release. Many of the most intense convective events in Europe occur around the Alps, where large-scale atmospheric flow is significantly influenced by the complex topography of mountain ridges and valleys and interacts with regional to local processes. The objective of CROSCEA is to systematically classify, characterize, and analyze convective hotspots in the greater Alpine region.

Research Project

HAIPI: Hailstorm Analysis, Impact, and Prediction Initiative

Hail is one of the hazards associated with extreme convective events. It is one of the most expensive atmospheric hazards, and recent events have demonstrated this repeatedly with costly damage to vehicles, buildings, and agriculture. Hail is still one of the biggest challenges in forecasting, which is mainly due to the insufficient amount and quality of available data, together with the short spatio-temporal process scales. HAIPI aims to improve this situation integrating novel data sources to develop a product that estimates expected hail stone sizes through state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms. The focus is on crowd-sourced hail reports from the DWD WarnWetter-App as well as new dual-pol radar products, and existing products used in the DWD seamless forecast chain, e.g. KONRAD3D.

Research Project

STRIKE: Stochastic Tracks for Risk and Impacts of
Key hail Events

Hail is a significant cause for damage every year. Especially in agriculture. Modelling the damage potential of hailstorms is still a major challenge due to high uncertainties in hail observation data. STRIKE is developing models for stochastic risk assessment that take more comprehensive hazard and vulnerability characteristics into account.

Collaborations and associated projects

Collaboration

scClim – Seamless coupling of kilometer-resolution weather predictions and climate simulations with hail impact assessments for multiple sectors

scClim is an external Swiss project lead by Prof. Dr. David Bresch (ETH Zurich). CliG is involved in two PhD projects of the SNF-funded Sinergia project. Socio-economic impacts of weather phenomena in a changing climate are a concern for government agencies, industry and the public, on time scales from hours (warnings) to decades (adaptation, long-term strategic planning). This project focuses on thunderstorm-related severe weather, in particular hail, one of the main weather-related damage drivers in Central Europe for agricultural crops and infrastructure, and related impacts today and in future. Learn more about the project at the scClim Homepage:

Expert Panel Participation

The Heat and Cognition Project: The Collective Cost of Extreme Heat

Research

Our Research Focus and Current Projects

Publications

List of publications

Teaching

Our Teaching Program and Thesis Information

Team

Meet the team