Lightning in Alpine regions is associated with events such as thunderstorms, extreme precipitation, high wind gusts, flash floods, and debris flows. We present a statistical approach to predict lightning counts based on numerical weather predictions. Lightning counts are considered on a grid with 18 km mesh size. Skilful prediction is obtained for a forecast horizon of 5 days over complex terrain.

As an example of how to robustly determine climate model uncertainty, the paper describes an experiment that perturbs the initial conditions for the ocean's temperature of a climate model. A total of 30 perturbed simulations are used (via an emulator) to estimate spatial uncertainties for temperature and precipitation fields. We also examined (using maximum covariance analysis) how ocean temperatures affect air temperatures and precipitation over land and the importance of feedback processes.

This work uses current temperature observations combined with climate models to project future temperature estimates, e.g., 100 years into the future. We accomplish this by modeling temperature as a smooth function of time both in the seasonal variation as well as in the annual trend. These smooth functions are estimated at multiple quantiles that are all projected into the future. We hope that this work can be used as a template for how other climate variables can be projected into the future.

This paper presents the analysis of data from small-scale laboratory experimental smouldering fires that were digitally video-recorded. The video images of these fires bear a resemblance to remotely sensed images of wildfires and provide an opportunity to fit and assess a spatial model for fire spread that attempts to account for uncertainty in fire growth. We found that the fitting method is feasible, and the spatial model provides a suitable mathematical for the fire spread process.

This article presents a method for improving probabilistic air temperature forecasts, particularly at Alpine sites. Using a nonsymmetric forecast distribution, the probabilistic forecast quality can be improved with respect to the common symmetric Gaussian distribution used. Furthermore, a long-term training approach of 3 years is presented to ensure the stability of the regression coefficients. The research was based on a PhD project on building an automated forecast system for northern Italy.

Low-visibility conditions reduce the flight capacity of airports and can lead to delays and supplemental costs for airlines and airports. In this study, the forecasting skill and most important model predictors of airport-relevant low visibility are investigated for multiple flight planning horizons with different statistical models.

Accurate wind forecasts are of great importance for decision-making processes in today's society. This work presents a novel probabilistic post-processing method for wind vector forecasts employing a bivariate Gaussian response distribution. To capture a possible mismatch between the predicted and observed wind direction caused by location-specific properties, the approach incorporates a smooth rotation of the wind direction conditional on the season and the forecasted ensemble wind direction.

Extreme temperature and precipitation events in Australia have caused significant socio-economic and environmental impacts. Determining the factors contributing to these extremes is an active area of research. This paper describes a set of studies that have examined the causes of extreme climate events in recent years in Australia. Ideally, this review will be useful for the application of these extreme event attribution approaches to climate and weather extremes occurring elsewhere.

A deep learning convolutional neural network (DL-FRONT) was around 90 % successful in determining the locations of weather fronts over North America when compared against front locations determined manually by forecasters. DL-FRONT detects fronts using maps of air pressure, temperature, humidity, and wind from historical observations or climate models. DL-FRONT makes it possible to do science that was previously impractical because manual front identification would take too much time.

In climate change attribution studies, one often seeks to maximize a signal-to-noise ratio, where the signal is the anthropogenic response and the noise is climate variability. A solution commonly used in D&A studies thus far consists of projecting the signal on the subspace spanned by the leading eigenvectors of climate variability. Here I show that this approach is vastly suboptimal – in fact, it leads instead to maximizing the noise-to-signal ratio. I then describe an improved solution.