Scientists from several Spanish universities carried out a discoveryattributing for the first time a giant hail stormwhich occurred in the province of Girona (in northeastern Spain) in August 2022, for the purposes of climate change.
The combination of a marine heat wave and the climate change anthropogenic “decisive” contribution to the giant hail storm -up to 12 cm- that occurred on August 30, 2022 in the province of Girona, have concluded researchers from the Complutense universities of Madrid (UCM), Valladolid (UVA) and Pablo de Olavide of Seville (UPO).
Through numerical simulations, the scientific investigation established for the first time a direct relationship between the climate change and this type of phenomena, the Complutense University has reported today.
According to him scientific discoverySpecifically, they point out that the development of a supercell – an immense and damaging rotating storm – was favored by an unprecedented amount of convective energy, the “fuel” that fuels the formation of these supercells in the atmosphere, which is translated into greater severity of the storm, encouraging the formation of giant hail.
The storm, which seriously affected the Baix Empordà region of Catalonia, left in its wake significant material damage to vehicles, roofs and crop fields, numerous injuries and the first direct fatality due to hail in Europe in the last 20 years.
“He study provides greater understanding of extreme hail events, and highlights the need to take action to address the climate change and mitigate its impacts, which can be devastating in the most vulnerable communities,” highlighted Mariano Sastre, researcher at the Department of Earth Physics and Astrophysics at the UCM.
To carry out the studywhose conclusions have been published in Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers carried out two types of numerical simulations: the first with current conditions and, secondly, others that reproduced the conditions of the pre-industrial level, the indicator of global temperature before the Industrial Revolution, considered the beginning of systematic and persistent emissions of greenhouse gases of anthropogenic origin.
This level is used as a reference to quantify the impact of said emissions and the consequent effects of the global warmingthey remembered researchersand assured that, with pre-industrial conditions, the model provided hail sizes much smaller than those actually recorded.
The results also shed light on the importance of the marine heat wave – an event in which the temperature of an entire sea or much of an ocean is much higher than usual – in creating a “convective” environment conducive to the formation of hail giant.
“Apart from anthropogenic forcing, when the effect of the marine heat wave was also eliminated in the simulations, a notable reduction in convective environments favorable for the formation of clouds was observed. hail giant,” Sastre explained.
The next steps of the investigation point to the need to delve deeper into the complex interactions between extreme weather events and the climate change anthropogenic.
Furthermore, among the next goals of the researchers is trying to contribute to designing a warning protocol so that meteorological services can alert the population in time, in the event that a new similar event occurs in the future.
Video: this is how climate change manifests itself
Efe, Geophysical Research Letters, Youtube.
