Project Detail

Windstorms in the Czech Lands during the past 500 years

Name: Windstorms in the Czech Lands during the past 500 years
Researchers: Szabó Péter (co-researcher)
Suchánková Silvie (member in research team)
Provider: Grantová agentura České republiky
Number: GA15-11805S
Realization from: 2015
Realization to: 2017
Summary: Windstorms may be ranked with floods and droughts as the most serious of weather extremes to lead to material damage and loss of human life. A combination of windstorm information from various documentary historical climatology sources for the pre-instrumental period, and modern strong wind events extracted from wind speed measurements and calculations of storminess based on sea-level-pressure fields in the instrumental period, will be used to compile a 500-year chronology of windstorms and their impacts in the Czech Lands. This chronology will then be employed to derive important trends in windstorms and to study their spatial and spatio-temporal variability in frequency of occurrence, magnitude, seasonality, synoptic causes, climatic influences and impacts. Particular attention will be paid to analysis of the effects of windstorms on the past and present development of forests in Moravia and Silesia. All of this will then be employed to present a comprehensive synthesis of windstorms past, present and future (including their impacts on forests) in the Czech Lands.

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