A severe thunderstorm climatology for Australia and associated thunderstorm environments

Abstract

Severe thunderstorms can present a significant threat to life and property in Australia. A unique and broad database of severe thunderstorm reports has been constructed for the Australian region for 2003-2010 from observer reports of hailstones, winds in excess of 90 km h-1 and, less frequently, tornadoes. Based on this database, a climatology of atmospheric environments associated with the occurrence of severe thunderstorms in Australia was developed using pseudo-proximity soundings from the MesoLAPS numerical weather prediction model simulations. Observed soundings have been used to verify derived soundings from MesoLAPS simulations, with a reasonable performance over much of the continent..