Towards the Standardization of European Weatherand Impact Observations
Thomas Krennert talks about weather- and impact reports and a real-time feedback loop between forecasters and voluntary observers.
Length: 27 minutes.
Since the release of the WMO recommendations for impact based forecasts and warnings, reliable data about weather related effects on society and public life became increasingly important for operational forecasting. Particularly densely populated urban areas are vulnerable to the forces of convective weather hazards. In this regard, operational automatic station networks or remote sensing data cannot provide complete information about the ground truth like hail size, downburst related wind damage, flash floods or damage from lightning strikes. In order to fill this gap, targeted human assessment and observations are still needed. With the help of weather- and impact reports a real-time feedback loop between forecasters and voluntary observers can be established, to improve impact based warnings and thus to increase weather related disaster resilience and mitigation. In our presentation, we introduce the Austrian weather- and impact observation system "wettermelden.at" with its applications and furthermore a concept for the swift exchange of these reports on national and European levels.