Analysis of warnings issued by the Spanish meteorological agency (AEMET) in the province of Seville from 2011 to 2017

Abstract

Weather risks can be predicted hours or even days in advance. The Spanish meteorological agency (AEMET) has developed a series of plans to warn the population about the arrival of adverse weather events (FEMA), the most recent of these plans being METEOALERTA (version 7, June 2018). These plans define the phenomena that can cause alerts, as well as thresholds and warning zones. This work gathers all the FEMA warnings issued by AEMET for the three Sevillian districts (Campiña; Sierra Norte; and Sierra Sur) between 2011 and 2017. As well as analysing a series of warnings and their main characteristics for each type of phenomena and for each zone, a comparison was made with the real data observed in a series of meteorological stations distributed throughout the province during the period. This comparison has enabled the analysis of two situations, namely those in which predictions were confirmed by observed data, and those others in which they were not. Although results should not be considered as conclusive, they show some important differences among predicted and observed data, and these differences are dissimilar for the distinct studied phenomena and for the prediction areas. Nevertheless, these preliminary results encourage future works.

Keywords

• aemet
• meteoalerta
• avisos por fenómenos meteorológicos adversos
• zonas de avisos
• umbrales
• provincia de sevilla.