Hazard uncertainty and related damage potentials of extra-tropical storms

• Main Author: Walz, Michael Alexander
• Other Authors: Leckebusch, Gregor, nerc
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: GE Environmental Sciences; QC Physics; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/9057/7.hassmallThumbnailVersion/Walz2019PhD.pdf; http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/9057/; http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/9057/7/Walz2019PhD.pdf

Extra--tropical winter windstorms are among the most loss--intensive natural hazards in Europe. This thesis is dedicated to advance the understanding of these hazardous events and their uncertainty in various aspects. These aspects include the serial clustering and spatial variability of storm events, the seasonal predictability of extreme wind speeds associated with windstorms and an impact assessment of windstorms both in a climatological as well as from a loss--related perspective. The recurring element in all studies are large--scale drivers (e.g. North Atlantic Oscillation - NAO) which are linked to different features of extra--tropical windstorms, e.g. the inter--annual variability. It can be shown that large--scale drivers are able to explain a considerable amount of variability of windstorms. Seasonal forecast ensemble hindcasts are used to create a physical consistent virtual reality of more than 1500 years. Thus, the uncertainty of these extreme events can be estimated more accurately compared to using century--long reanalysis. This large sample size can also be used to estimate potential extremes with respect to intensity and severity of windstorms more accurately. The findings of these studies are presented in five scientific papers which are included as five chapters in this submitted thesis.