Tornado frequency power law

Daily tornado frequency distributions in the United States, James Elsner, Thomas Jagger, Holly Widen and Daniel Chavas, Scheduled for publication in Environmental Research Letters,  February 2014.

The script was modified from the write-up by Kate Ravilious from an e-mail interview I had with her.

Seasonal forecast model for tornado chasers

In this study we consider tornadoes only within a region centered on Russell, Kansas, as defined in Elsner et al. (2013). The region stretches across the central Great Plains from northern Texas to central Nebraska and is bounded by 36.108 and 41.578N latitudes and 102.378 and 95.348W longitudes. This is an area with a high concentration of tornadoes and where there are no large spatial gradients in occurrence rates. It corresponds to an area favored by storm chasers. http://bit.ly/1fswIkp

Total Area Covered by Tornadoes by Year in the United States

Estimated annual total area (path length x path width) of all U.S. tornadoes from 1950 through 2011.

The area is represented by a disc centered on Oklahoma City.

Data are from NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.

R code to reproduce the analysis is provided here.

Download poster: http://myweb.fsu.edu/jelsner/afisa_1st_Tornadoes.pdf

Per Tornado Day Mean Tornado Path Length and Width (m)

For tornadoes that resulted in at least one fatality. Note the increasing length and width over time. Data source: U.S. Storm Prediction Center. http://www.spc.noaa.gov/gis/svrgis/zipped/tornado.zip

Mean tornado path length (m) and path width (m) by (E)F scale

Annual mean tornado path length (meters), path width (meters), and path area (square meters) by (E)F scale category and year. Change the scales to (log)arithmic and the size to Area. Have fun! Data source: U.S. Storm Prediction Center. http://www.spc.noaa.gov/gis/svrgis/zipped/tornado.zip

1st International Summit on Tornadoes & Climate Change

Where: Minoa Palace, Crete, Greece http://www.minoapalace.gr/

When: May 25-30, 2014

Why: Bring together for the first time the tornado and climate change research communities

Why Greece? The Aegean Conferences will sponsor and host it. Overlooking the tranquil waters of the Aegean Sea is a great place to discuss what might at times be a contentious topic.

Description:

Societal interest in tornadoes has increased over the past few years largely due to the loss of life and catastrophic damages of recent events.  In the United States the 2011 and 2013 tornado seasons were particularly bad for the large impacts on society.  

Using new radar technology and extensive field programs scientists have gained a considerable understanding of how tornadoes in rich moisture and high shear environments form.  New insights into how the melting Arctic sea ice can shift these environments provide the background to a better understanding of tornado climate.  We propose to bring together for the first time the tornado and climate communities for a 5-day summit with the goal to advance the state of knowledge of how tornado activity across the world might be affected by climate change.  

The themes of the summit include: quantification of the risk of tornadoes and other severe local storms, understanding the relationship between severe local storms and climate, tools (statistical models, GCMs, theory, etc) to examine how much the risk is changing over time, and methods to advance the climate prediction of tornadoes and other severe local storms.

More Information? Email me.