Climatology of large hail in Europe: characteristics of the European Severe Weather Database

Abstract

Large hail (greater than 2 cm in diameter) can cause devastating damage to crops and property and can even cause loss of life. Because hail reports are often collected by individual countries, constructing a Europe-wide large-hail climatology has been challenging to date. However, the European Severe Storm Laboratory's European Severe Weather Database provides the only pan-European dataset for severe convective-storm reports. The database is comprised of 62 053 large-hail reports from 40 CE to September 2020, yet its characteristics have not been evaluated. Thus, the purpose of this study is to evaluate hail reports from this database for constructing a climatology of large hail. For the period 2000–2020, large-hail reports are most prominent in June, whereas large-hail days are most common in July. Large hail is mostly reported between 13:00–19:00 local time, a consistent pattern since 2010. The intensity, as measured by maximum hail size, shows decreasing frequency with increasing hailstone diameter and little change over the 20-year period. The quality of reports by country varies, with the most complete reporting being from central European countries. Thus, results suggest that despite its short record, many indications point to the dataset representing some reliable aspects of the European large-hail climatology, albeit with some limitations.